Download or read book The Road to Jonestown written by Jeff Guinn and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Raven written by Tim Reiterman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-11-13 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The basis for the upcoming HBO miniseries and the "definitive account of the Jonestown massacre" (Rolling Stone) -- now available for the first time in paperback. Tim Reiterman’s Raven provides the seminal history of the Rev. Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and the murderous ordeal at Jonestown in 1978. This PEN Award–winning work explores the ideals-gone-wrong, the intrigue, and the grim realities behind the Peoples Temple and its implosion in the jungle of South America. Reiterman’s reportage clarifies enduring misperceptions of the character and motives of Jim Jones, the reasons why people followed him, and the important truth that many of those who perished at Jonestown were victims of mass murder rather than suicide. This widely sought work is restored to print after many years with a new preface by the author, as well as the more than sixty-five rare photographs from the original volume.
Download or read book Salvation and Suicide written by David Chidester and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2003-10-16 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praise for the first edition: "[This] ambitious and courageous book [is a] benchmark of theology by which questions about the meaningful history of the Peoples Temple may be measured." —Journal of the American Academy of Religion Re-issued in recognition of the 25th anniversary of the mass suicides at Jonestown, this revised edition of David Chidester's pathbreaking book features a new prologue that considers the meaning of the tragedy for a post-Waco, post-9/11 world. For Chidester, Jonestown recalls the American religious commitment to redemptive sacrifice, which for Jim Jones meant saving his followers from the evils of capitalist society. "Jonestown is ancient history," writes Chidester, but it does provide us with an opportunity "to reflect upon the strangeness of familiar . . . promises of redemption through sacrifice."
Download or read book A Thousand Lives written by Julia Scheeres and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Cult City written by Daniel J. Flynn and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Jonestown Massacre written by Jim Jones and published by Temple Press (UK). This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition includes an introduction by Karl Eden putting events in Waco, Texas into context.
Download or read book Our Father Who Are in Hell written by James Reston, Jr. and published by Dissertation.com. This book was released on 2000-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the definitive work on the Guyana tragedy when on November 18, 1978, one thousand members of the People’s Temple cult killed themselves in a Guyana jungle by drinking poison-laced Kool-Aid. Through the Freedom of Information Act, the author obtained more than 800 hours of tape recordings made in the jungle. Reston chronicles the descent into madness of the cult leader, the Reverend Jim Jones. "Reston's eye is novelistic....His larger purpose is to make the terribly irrational somehow understandable....He does so with the good judgment of a writer willing to avoid certain faddish modes of analysis." —Robert Coles, Washington Post Book Review
Download or read book The Art and Life of Jimmie Jones written by James Aton and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Landscape Artist of the Canyon Country Winner of the 2016 Evans Handcart Award While this beautiful book showcases the fabulous artwork of renowned Utah landscape artist Jimmie Jones, it also delves into his history, motivation, education, and progression as an artist. Author James Aton, through his meticulous research and writing, weaves an interesting and in-depth narrative of Jones' life, accented with archival photographs, to accompany the numerous art images. The art presented in this book begins from Jones' childhood, crayon colorings saved by his mother, through his portrait period, including works from the fourteen winters Jones lived in San Blas, Mexico, to images from the years he spent painting various views of the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, and the other exquisite canyons of southern Utah. The Art and Life of Jimmie Jones will be a valued addition to any art lover's book collection. JAMES M. ATON is a professor of English at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. He is the author of John Wesley Powell and Jim Jones: The San Blas Years and the coauthor of River Flowing from the Sunrise: An Environmental History of the Lower San Juan and The River Knows Everything: Desolation Canyon and the Green.
Download or read book Seductive Poison written by Deborah Layton and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-08-18 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Hold Hands and Die written by John Maguire and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Six Years with God written by Jeannie Mills and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a chronicle that talks of beatings, humiliations, and brainwashings, the author records her six years as a member of the Peoples Temple and describes the awesome and sadistic power of Jim Jones.
Download or read book Revisiting Jonestown written by Domenico Arturo Nesci and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-12-13 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revisiting Jonestown covers three main topics: the psycho-biography of Jim Jones (the leader of the suicidal community) from the new perspective of Prenatal Psychology and transgenerational trauma, the story of his Peoples Temple, with emphasis on what kind of leadership and membership were responsible for their tragic end, and the interpretation of death rituals by religious cults as regression to primordial stages of human evolution, when a series of genetic mutations changed the destiny of Homo Sapiens, at the dawn of religion and human awareness. A pattern of collective suicide is finally identified, making it possible to foresee and try to prevent its tragic repetition. At the same time, through an artistic editorial work on original images from the Peoples Temple files, a sort of Multimedia Psychotherapy is subliminally delivered in order to help the mourning of the victims of Jonestown, to whose memory the book is dedicated.
Download or read book Bolo the Brave written by Jim Jones and published by . This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten year old Charlie lost his parents to pneumonia when he was nine and has been living with his Grandpa Will ever since. Grandpa Will has a chuck wagon and hires on to wagon trains to cook for them. Right now, Charlie and Grandpa Will are waiting out on the windy Texas Plains for the wagon train Grandpa Will contracted with to show up. It's been days with no sign of the wagon train. Grandpa Will has ridden out every day to look for the group, leaving Charlie at camp to do chores. To his surprise, a funny looking crooked nosed dog shows up one day. Charlie feeds him scraps and plays with him and soon they become friends. When Grandpa Will finds out, he is not pleased that this odd critter is taking food from their larder. Charlie convinces him that the dog is his friend though. Grandpa Will realizes the boy is lonely and in need of companionship so he grudgingly allows him to stay. One morning as he is leaving, Grandpa Will tells Charlie that he's seen signs of a mountain lion. He warns him to stay close to camp and keep his rifle handy. Charlie tells him that Bolo, whom he has named for the unusual white pattern on his chest that resembles a bolo tie, will protect him. Grandpa tells Charlie not to count on it and once again goes out in search of the lost wagon train.Late in the afternoon, Bolo begins making a noise that is different from any that Charlie has heard him make before. It's a low growl, like a steady rumble. The hair stands up on his back and he looks directly at a stand of trees about thirty feet away from the wagon. Quickly, Charlie grabs his rifle and stares intently at the trees. He is terrified by the sight he sees ... a full grown mountain lion. The lion begins walking slowly towards the wagon and emits a petrifying scream that makes a chill run up his spine. He aims his rifle at the animal but has difficulty controlling the trembling in his hands. Suddenly, Bolo rushes toward the mountain lion and begins barking ferociously at it. Charlie realizes that if he doesn't shoot the animal, his friend will most likely die. He manages to settle his nerves enough to aim but before he can get a shot off, he hears a commotion. He turns and sees his Grandpa Will riding like the wind toward the mountain lion. Grandpa fires several shots at the animal which scares it off. It spins and races off into the brush.Charlie tells Grandpa Will how Bolo ran over to challenge the mountain lion and how he realized that if he didn't shoot the animal, his friend would die. He confesses that he'd been terribly afraid and wonders if he is a coward. Grandpa Will reassures him that being afraid in the face of a threat is a natural feeling and that standing up to the dangerous animal was very brave of him. He comforts Charlie and gives Bolo extra table scraps and a good belly rub. He also tells Charlie that he found the wagon train and they will be there by the next day. They settle down for the night and prepare for the adventures that the next day will bring.
Download or read book Violence and Religious Commitment written by Ken Levi and published by Penn State University Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was the tragedy at Jonestown "an isolated case," or was it "an example of extremist cult behavior that emerges in times of great social upheaval?" The answer to this question, according to the contributors to this book, is important to all Americans as a basis for evaluating social and educational policy. Part I considers the general topic of sect violence, offering three positions. Chapter 1 contends that societal disruptions of the 1970's spawned distortions of alienation and devotion, resulting in "both extremely hostile and extremely selfless behavior. " Chapter 2 denies that the People's Temple resembled other new religious groups in significant ways, maintaining that the Jonestown massacre was a secular rather than a religious event. Chapter 3 takes an in-between position, holding that the People's Temple shared apocalyptic and communitarian views with other modern cults, but differed in respect to its leader's radicalism and paranoia. Part II presents three conceptual models for analyzing the People's Temple. Part III deals with reactions to Jonestown and other cult behavior, especially overreactions. Part IV, Chapter 11, is a first-hand account by a disillusioned former member who was murdered, reportedly by a People's Temple "hit squad," in February 1980, just after completing this chapter.
Download or read book A Little Dam Problem written by Jim Jones and published by . This book was released on 2016-12-18 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Little Dam Problem chronicles an epic fight over water rights between the State of Idaho and Idaho Power Company. A court decision in 1982 gave Idaho Power virtual control over the flow of the Snake River in southern Idaho. An unlikely political teamDemocrat Governor John Evans and Republican Attorney General Jim Jonesjoined with legislators and water users to undo the damage caused by the decision. Jim Jones brings readers into the midst of the battle, providing an insider view of the struggle between the State of Idaho and a politically powerful adversary. The story reads much like those old western movies where a powerful landowner grabs up all of the water resources, depriving sodbuster families of the precious resource. The book opens a window into the real world of government and politics
Download or read book Surviving Utopia written by Timothy Oliver Stoen and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-04-30 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Surviving Utopia" is a more autobiographical, less "academic," version of "Love Them to Death," published in March 2017, which Publishers Weekly calls "Stoen's deeply moving memoir."In that book I focused centrally on Jim Jones through 14 stages, as I experienced them. Here, I focus on myself in seeking, defending, opposing, and surviving utopia. I add my early years, and my reflections on the whole experience--psychological, political, and religious.On January 1, 1970, I joined Peoples Temple, led by Jim Jones, to create a utopia. On November 18, 1978, the utopian Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple became the operative causes of what pollster George Gallup called the "Jonestown story." The "Jonestown story," he said, was "the most widely followed event of 1978." The purpose of this book is to give an insider's personal account of that story, to share what it was like to have a dream smashed by that story, and to express deep gratitude for surviving-through no merit of my own-that story.I was the attorney, enemy, and post-mortem target of James Warren Jones who, on November 18, 1978, in Jonestown, Guyana, South America, unleashed-in the name of "love"-terror and death. 918 people would die that day.This ordinary man, Jim Jones, who had an extraordinary rhetorical talent for capturing the souls of kind and decent people, got them to assassinate a US congressman and, incredibly, got them-by the hundreds-to line up and kill themselves and their children. That evening, as my wife Grace and I lay benumbed, on a floor in the Pegasus Hotel in Georgetown, Guyana, we knew in n our hearts that one of those victims would be our beloved six-year-old son, John Victor Stoen."The CIA would have to acknowledge," says Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo, "that Jones succeeded where their MK-Ultra program failed in the ultimate control of the human mind." My seeking of utopia began on a Sunday afternoon-August 17, 1969-as I was leaving Black Panther headquarters in San Francisco. I proceeded to make three serious errors leading me into Peoples Temple. They were: anger, the ideology of "total equality," and pragmatism. My defending of utopia commenced on March 2, 1970, when I moved from Berkeley to Redwood Valley to cast my lot with Peoples Temple, and became the "county counsel" for Mendocino County and a pro bono lawyer for Jim Jones. Making Peoples Temple into a showcase model of total equality became a passionate dream. For seven years I aggressively defended Peoples Temple as a true utopian enterprise. During that time Jones became what the Washington Post would later be calling a "West Coast power."My opposing of utopia commenced on February 16, 1977, when I left my job as Head of Special Prosecutions for the San Francisco District Attorneys Office to go live in Jonestown with John Victor. His mother, Grace, was threatening a custody suit, and I had made a promise to protect Jones's paternity access to the child based on a false belief that he was the biological father. On November 18, 1977, I testified in court against Jones. I then went to Guyana to enforce our custody order against Jones, but the government was wired in his favor.The challenge of surviving of utopia commenced on November 18, 1978, when Jim Jones said on his death tape:"Somebody...see that Stoen does not get by with this infamy... He has done the thing he wanted to do. Have us destroyed." His loyalists accused me of manipulating the 1975 San Francisco mayoral election.Jones also issued that day a prophecy and a curse: "We win when we go down. Tim Stoen has nobody else to hate.... Then he'll destroy himself." I became deeply depressed by guilt and grief over the death of John Victor. I survived psychologically due to a spiritual experience in April 1988. Still, I had to claw myself back to society due to the media stigma. Finally, in 2000, I became a California prosecuting attorney, and have been such ever since.
Download or read book Jim Jones written by John Andrew Collins and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Reverend William Branham prophesied of God's blessing of Reverend Jim Jones ministry during a joint Latter Rain healing campaign in Indianapolis, Indiana, he had no idea what he had started. As Jones took his place in line as a "Malachi 4 Elijah Prophet," a deadly chain reaction ended in the deaths of over 900 people during what would become known as the Jonestown Massacre. Did this chain reaction start with William Branham's call for an Exodus during his time in the ministry with Jim Jones? Historical data that has now been made available to the public might hold the answers.
