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  1. Books
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3.8(32)

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

2018 Edgar Award Finalist—Best Fact Crime

“A thoroughly readable, thoroughly chilling account of a brilliant con man and his all-too vulnerable prey” (The Boston Globe)—the definitive story of preacher Jim Jones, who was responsible for the Jonestown Massacre, the largest murder-suicide in American history, by the New York Times bestselling author of Manson.

In the 1950s, a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the gospel and Marxism. His congregation was racially mixed, and he was a leader in the early civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California, where he got involved in electoral politics and became a prominent Bay Area leader. But underneath the surface lurked a terrible darkness.

In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his early days as an idealistic minister to a secret life of extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing, before the fateful decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died—including almost three hundred infants and children—after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.

Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. The Road to Jonestown is “the most complete picture to date of this tragic saga, and of the man who engineered it…The result is a disturbing portrait of evil—and a compassionate memorial to those taken in by Jones’s malign charisma” (San Francisco Chronicle).


Author:

  • Jeff Guinn

Narrator:

  • George Newbern

Format:

  • Audiobook
  • E-book

Duration:

  • 17 h 32 min
  • 535 pages

Language:

English

Categories:

  • History
  • United States of America

More by Jeff Guinn

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  1. Waco : David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and A Legacy of Rage

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  2. War on the Border : Villa, Pershing, the Texas Rangers, and an American Invasion

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  3. The Vagabonds : The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip

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  4. The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip

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  5. Manson : The Life and Times of Charles Manson

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  6. The Last Gunfight : The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral-And How It Changed the American West

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  7. Go Down Together : The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde

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  • 8 books

    Jeff Guinn

    Jeff Guinn is the bestselling author of numerous books, including Go Down Together, The Last Gunfight, Manson, The Road to Jonestown, War on the Border, and Waco. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas, and is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame.

    Read more

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