The Road to Jonestown

The Road to Jonestown

Author: Jeff Guinn

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-04-11

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 1476763828

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A portrait of the cult leader behind the Jonestown Massacre examines his personal life, from his extramarital affairs and drug use to his fraudulent faith healing practices and his decision to move his followers to Guyana, sharing new details about the events leading to the 1978 tragedy.


Jonestown Lullaby

Jonestown Lullaby

Author: Teri Buford O’Shea

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2011-09-14

Total Pages: 124

ISBN-13: 1462037380

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

At age nineteen, author Teri OShea joined Peoples Temple in California led by Jim Jones. A member for seven years, she escaped Peoples Temple three weeks before the massacre in Jonestown, Guyana. The raw and powerful poems in Jonestown Lullaby explore her experience in Jonestown and the aftermath of her survival. A personal confidant to Jim Jones for seven years, OShea writes about the harrowing nightmare of Jonestown with an intensity and passion seldom captured in poetic form. Teri was the last person to escape Peoples Temple before the massacre in Jonestown; now, she turns to writing to help find her way back to a more peaceful life. Jonestown Lullaby records her voyage, with vivid, stark images of the bewildering world that was Jonestown and the pathological madness of Jim Jones. Teri includes photographs of some of the Peoples Temple members who lived and lost their lives there; revealing an aspect of Jonestown rarely seen. This is her tribute to those who died so tragically. I Write I write from the poor side of silence Of an unholy priesthood that Captured my soul for a time These poems Neither confession nor biography Follow the voyage of a lonely spirit Into a realm where there are no answers


A Thousand Lives

A Thousand Lives

Author: Julia Scheeres

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-10-11

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 145162896X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1954, a pastor named Jim Jones opened a church in Indianapolis called Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church. He was a charismatic preacher with idealistic beliefs, and he quickly filled his pews with an audience eager to hear his sermons on social justice. As Jones’s behavior became erratic and his message more ominous, his followers leaned on each other to recapture the sense of equality that had drawn them to his church. But even as the congregation thrived, Jones made it increasingly difficult for members to leave. By the time Jones moved his congregation to a remote jungle in Guyana and the US government began to investigate allegations of abuse and false imprisonment in Jonestown, it was too late. A Thousand Lives is the story of Jonestown as it has never been told. New York Times bestselling author Julia Scheeres drew from tens of thousands of recently declassified FBI documents and audiotapes, as well as rare videos and interviews, to piece together an unprecedented and compelling history of the doomed camp, focusing on the people who lived there. The people who built Jonestown wanted to forge a better life for themselves and their children. In South America, however, they found themselves trapped in Jonestown and cut off from the outside world as their leader goaded them toward committing “revolutionary suicide” and deprived them of food, sleep, and hope. Vividly written and impossible to forget, A Thousand Lives is a story of blind loyalty and daring escapes, of corrupted ideals and senseless, haunting loss.


Seductive Poison

Seductive Poison

Author: Deborah Layton

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2010-08-18

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0307575136

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this haunting and riveting firsthand account, a survivor of Jim Jones's Peoples Temple opens up the shadowy world of cults and shows how anyone can fall under their spell. "A suspenseful tale of escape that reads like a satisfying thriller.... The most important personal testimony to emerge from the Jonestown tragedy." —Chicago Tribune A high-level member of Jim Jones's Peoples Temple for seven years, Deborah Layton escaped his infamous commune in the Guyanese jungle, leaving behind her mother, her older brother, and many friends. She returned to the United States with warnings of impending disaster, but her pleas for help fell on skeptical ears, and shortly thereafter, in November 1978, the Jonestown massacre shocked the world. Seductive Poison is both an unflinching historical document and a suspenseful story of intrigue, power, and murder.


Cult City

Cult City

Author: Daniel J. Flynn

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2018-10-16

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 1504056760

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In recounting the fascinating, intersecting stories of Jim Jones and Harvey Milk, Cult City tells the story of a great city gone horribly wrong. November 1978. Reverend Jim Jones, the darling of the San Francisco political establishment, orchestrates the murders and suicides of 918 people at a remote jungle outpost in South America. Days later, Harvey Milk, one of America’s first openly gay elected officials—and one of Jim Jones’s most vocal supporters—is assassinated in San Francisco’s City Hall. This horrifying sequence of events shocked the world. Almost immediately, the lives and deaths of Jim Jones and Harvey Milk became shrouded in myth. Now, forty years later, this book corrects the record. The product of a decade of research, including extensive archival work and dozens of exclusive interviews, Cult City reveals just how confused our understanding has become. In life, Jim Jones enjoyed the support of prominent politicians and Hollywood stars even as he preached atheism and communism from the pulpit; in death, he transformed into a fringe figure, a “fundamentalist Christian” and a “fascist.” In life, Harvey Milk faked hate crimes, outed friends, and falsely claimed that the US Navy dishonorably discharged him over his homosexuality; in death, he is honored in an Oscar-winning movie, with a California state holiday, and a US Navy ship named after him. His assassin, a blue-collar Democrat who often voted with Milk in support of gay issues, is remembered as a right-winger and a homophobe. But the story extends far beyond Jones and Milk. Author Daniel J. Flynn vividly portrays the strange intersection of mainstream politics and murderous extremism in 1970s San Francisco—the hangover after the high of the Summer of Love.


Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple

Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple

Author: Rebecca Moore

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2009-03-20

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This in-depth investigation of Peoples Temple and its tragic end at Jonestown corrects sensationalized misunderstandings of the group and places its individual members within the broader context of religion in America. Most people understand Peoples Temple through its violent disbanding following events in Jonestown, Guyana, where more than 900 Americans committed murder and suicide in a jungle commune. Media coverage of the event sensationalized the group and obscured the background of those who died. The view that emerged thirty years ago continues to dominate understanding of Jonestown today, despite the dozens of books, articles, and documentaries that have appeared. This book provides a fresh perspective on Peoples Temple, locating the group within the context of religion in America and offering a contemporary history that corrects the inaccuracies often associated with the group and its demise. Although Peoples Temple had some of the characteristics many associate with cults, it also shared many characteristics of black religion in America. Moreover, it is crucial to understand how the organization fits into the social and political movements of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s: race, class, colonialism, gender, and other issues dominated the times and so dominated the consciousness of the members of Peoples Temple. Here, Rebecca Moore, who lost three family members in the events in Guyana, offers a framework for U.S. social, cultural, and political history that helps readers to better understand Peoples Temple and its members.


Gone from the Promised Land

Gone from the Promised Land

Author:

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published: 1987-01-01

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 9780887388019

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this superb cultural history, John R. Hall presents a reasoned analysis of the meaning of Jonestown--why it happened and how it is tied to our history as a nation, our ideals, our practices, and the tension of modern culture. Hall deflates the myths of Jonestown by exploring how much of what transpired was unique to the group and its leader and how much can be explained by reference to wider social processes.


Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple

Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple

Author: Rebecca Moore

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2018-07-06

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 1440864802

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This in-depth investigation of Peoples Temple and its tragic end at Jonestown corrects sensationalized misunderstandings of the group and places its individual members within the broader context of religion in America. Most people understand Peoples Temple through its violent disbanding following events in Jonestown, Guyana, where more than 900 Americans committed murder and suicide in a jungle commune. Media coverage of the event sensationalized the group and obscured the background of those who died. The view that emerged thirty years ago continues to dominate understanding of Jonestown today, despite the dozens of books, articles, and documentaries that have appeared. This book provides a fresh perspective on Peoples Temple, locating the group within the context of religion in America and offering a contemporary history that corrects the inaccuracies often associated with the group and its demise. Although Peoples Temple had some of the characteristics many associate with cults, it also shared many characteristics of black religion in America. Moreover, it is crucial to understand how the organization fits into the social and political movements of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s: race, class, colonialism, gender, and other issues dominated the times and so dominated the consciousness of the members of Peoples Temple. Here, Rebecca Moore, who lost three family members in the events in Guyana, offers a framework for U.S. social, cultural, and political history that helps readers to better understand Peoples Temple and its members.