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 368 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 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 Seductive Poison is both an unflinching historical document and a suspenseful story of intrigue, power, and murder.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 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 Undaunted written by Jackie Speier and published by Little a. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: November, 1978. Speier joined Congressman Leo Ryan's delegation to rescue defectors from cult leader Jim Jones's Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana. Ryan was killed on the airstrip tarmac. Jackie was shot five times at point-blank range. While recovering, Jackie had to choose: Would she become a victim or a fighter? She chose to become a vocal proponent for human rights. Here she reveals her story of resilience as a widow, a mother, a congresswoman, and a fighter, to inspire other women to draw strength from adversity in order to do what is right. -- adapted from jacket
Download or read book Jonestown Survivor written by Laura Johnston Kohl and published by . This book was released on 2010-03 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laura Johnston Kohl was a teen activist working to integrate public facilities in the Washington, D.C., area. She actively fought for civil rights and free speech, and against the Vietnam War throughout the 1960s. After trying to effect change single-handedly, she found she needed more hands. She joined Peoples Temple in 1970, living and working in the progressive religious movement in both California and Guyana. A fluke saved her from the mass murders and suicides on November 18, 1978, when 913 of her beloved friends died in Jonestown. Soon after this, Synanon, a residential community, helped her gradually affirm life. In 1991, she got to work, finished her studies, and became a public school teacher. On the 20th anniversary of the deaths in Jonestown, she looked up fellow survivors of the Jonestown tragedy and they have worked to put the jigsaw puzzle together that was Peoples Temple. Her perspective has evolved as new facts have cleared up mysteries and she has had time to reflect. Her mission continues to be to acknowledge, write about, and speak about why the members joined Peoples Temple, why they went to Guyana, and who they were. She lives with her family in San Diego. Laura appreciates feedback about her book, and especially likes clarifying information or answering questions that come up as you read. Contact her through her new website: www. jonestownsurvivor.com
Download or read book Jonestown Survivor written by Laura Johnston Kohl and published by . This book was released on 2010-03 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laura Johnston Kohl was a teen activist working to integrate public facilities in the Washington, D.C., area. She actively fought for civil rights and free speech, and against the Vietnam War throughout the 1960s. After trying to effect change single-handedly, she found she needed more hands. She joined Peoples Temple in 1970, living and working in the progressive religious movement in both California and Guyana. A fluke saved her from the mass murders and suicides on November 18, 1978, when 913 of her beloved friends died in Jonestown. Soon after this, Synanon, a residential community, helped her gradually affirm life. In 1991, she got to work, finished her studies, and became a public school teacher. On the 20th anniversary of the deaths in Jonestown, she looked up fellow survivors of the Jonestown tragedy and they have worked to put the jigsaw puzzle together that was Peoples Temple. Her perspective has evolved as new facts have cleared up mysteries and she has had time to reflect. Her mission continues to be to acknowledge, write about, and speak about why the members joined Peoples Temple, why they went to Guyana, and who they were. She lives with her family in San Diego. Laura appreciates feedback about her book, and especially likes clarifying information or answering questions that come up as you read. Contact her through her new website: www. jonestownsurvivor.com
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 Jonesopened 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 And Then They Were Gone written by Judy Bebelaar and published by . This book was released on 2019-04-18 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Of the 918 Americans who died in the shocking murder-suicides of November 18, 1978, in the tiny South American country of Guyana, a third were under eighteen. More than half were in their twenties or younger. And Then They Were Gone: Teenagers of Peoples Temple from High School to Jonestown begins in San Francisco at the small school where Reverend Jim Jones enrolled the teens of his Peoples Temple church in 1976. Within a year, most had been sent to join Jones and his other congregants in what Jones promised was a tropical paradise based on egalitarian values, but which turned out to be a deadly prison camp. Set against the turbulent backdrop of the late 1970s, And Then They Were Gone draws from interviews, books, and articles. Many of these powerful stories are told here for the first time."--Back cover
Download or read book Slavery of Faith written by Leslie Wagner-Wilson and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2009 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slavery Of Faith...the quietly kept story of a young woman's escape through the jungles of Jonestown, Guyana the morning of the massacre November 18, 1978 and her struggles to live in the aftermath. November 18, 2008 marks 30 years since the Jonestown, Guyana Massacre/Suicides and the death of its founder, the Reverend Jim Jones. Escaping Jonestown, Guyana the morning of November 18,1978 with nine others, Leslie Wagner-Wilson then twenty one years old, trekked thirty seven miles through the jungle with a 40-pound care package strapped to her back with a sheet, her son, later to be known as the youngest survivor of Jonestown. That evening, she would be told that Jonestown was gone along with her plan to escape and return with her father, Richard Wagner who was a part of the Concerned Relatives to free the rest of her family. Amongst the carnage would be her husband, mother, brother, sister, niece, nephew, sister in law, brother in law and the friends she had grown up and loved since 13. Slavery of Faith reveals the life of a thirteen year old coming of age in the heart of People's Temple Disciples of Christ Church where the pastor Jim Jones, exhorted his followers to consider him divine and to call him "Father" while he touted his extra-marital affairs from the pulpit. The world of Jim Jones was one of inverted ideals, isolation and alienation. However, what began as a church that appealed to peoples inner spirit to help others, was turned into a living hell. Yet it was a place she would go, half a continent away, to be with her 2 year old son, who'd been taken to Jonestown by Jim Jones as he made his exodus to Guyana. It shares the horrors of Jonestown - the labor punishment squads, suicide drills, sleep deprivation, drugging, and humiliations. It also takes the reader through the escape that she says was revealed to her in the spirit. Thirty years since Jonestown, Slavery of Faith also chronicles her return to the U.S. under a veil of secrecy in fear of the "death squads", her fight to maintain her faith in her most darkest hours; suffering survivors guilt, drug addiction, a family suicide, and finally redemption. It shares her journey through psychological and spiritual jungles to reach a place of remembrance-- to "live their love and not their deaths." Faith has allowed her the resiliency to as she states "tuck and roll" and discover that through pain, tragedy and joy, her life has found divine order.
Download or read book Stories from Jonestown written by Leigh Fondakowski and published by . This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The saga of Jonestown didnOCOt end on the day in November 1978 when more than nine hundred Americans died in a mass murder-suicide in the Guyanese jungle. While only a handful of people present at the agricultural project survived that day in Jonestown, more than eighty members of Peoples Temple, led by Jim Jones, were elsewhere in Guyana on that day, and thousands more members of the movement still lived in California. Emmy-nominated writer Leigh Fondakowski, who is best known for her work on the play and HBO film "The Laramie Project," spent three years traveling the United States to interview these survivors, many of whom have never talked publicly about the tragedy. Using more than two hundred hours of interview material, Fondakowski creates intimate portraits of these survivors as they tell their unforgettable stories. Collectively this is a record of ordinary people, stigmatized as cultists, who after the Jonestown massacre were left to deal with their grief, reassemble their lives, and try to make sense of how a movement born in a gospel of racial and social justice could have gone so horrifically wrongOCotaking with it the lives of their sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters. As these survivors look back, we learn what led them to join the Peoples Temple movement, what life in the church was like, and how the trauma of JonestownOCOs end still affects their lives decades later. What emerges are portrayals both haunting and hopefulOCoof unimaginable sadness, guilt, and shame but also resilience and redemption. Weaving her own artistic journey of discovery throughout the book in a compelling historical context, Fondakowski delivers, with both empathy and clarity, one of the most gripping, moving, and humanizing accounts of Jonestown ever written.
Download or read book Raven written by Tim Reiterman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-11-13 with total page 688 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 Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple written by Rebecca Moore and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-07-06 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
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 Jonestown written by Wilson Harris and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2011-11-17 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'I was obsessed - let me confess - by cities and settlements in the Central and South Americas that are an enigma to many scholars. I dreamt of their abandonment, their bird-masks, their animal-masks ... Did their inhabitants rebel against the priests, did obscure holocausts occur, civil strife, famine, plague? Was Jonestown the latest manifestation...?' Jonestown (1996), one of Wilson Harris's most acclaimed creations, is a fictional re-imagining of the real-life ritual mass suicide orchestrated by Reverend Jim Jones in the remote Guyana forest in 1978. The novel's narrator, Francisco Bone, has survived the suicide albeit in a traumatized condition. By way of a dream-book he tries to heal his psychic wound, under the influence of the Mayan concept of time that twins past and future. Faber Finds is devoted to restoring to readers a wealth of lost or neglected classics and authors of distinction. The range embraces fiction, non-fiction, the arts and children's books. For a full list of available titles visit www.faberfinds.co.uk. To join the dialogue with fellow book-lovers please see our blog, www.faberfindsblog.co.uk.
Download or read book The Onliest One Alive written by Catherine Thrash and published by Marian K. Towne. This book was released on 1995 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chapters include "Comin Up in Alabama," "Opportunity in Indiana," "My Life as a Woman," "With Jim Jones in Indianapolis," "Following Jim to California," "End Times in Jonestown, Guyana," "Back Home Again in California & Indiana." Only extant account of poor, African-American, elderly, disabled woman survivor, including why & how she survived. Richard Fears, Religious Studies Instructor, Ball State University, says, "Hyacinth Thrash can teach people a lot about themselves & their misperceptions...She is one gutsy lady!" Wilma Gibbs, Program Activist, Indiana Historical Society, says, "The story of the Jonestown incident is like a giant puzzle with missing sections that continues to reach closer to home." Bette Joe Davis, Ph.D., (ret.) Professor of Education, "I couldn't put it down." To order: Marian K. Towne, 5129 N. Illinois St., Indianapolis, IN 46208-2613; 317-253-7973.
Download or read book Dear People written by Denice Stephenson and published by Heyday Books. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Denice Stephenson describes the heartbreaking tragedy of Jonestown---the idealistic community movement that preceded it--presented in text and photos from the Peoples Temple Archive.
Download or read book The Pawn The Bowers Files Book 1 written by Steven James and published by Revell. This book was released on 2007-02-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Special Agent Patrick Bowers had only met one man who made him truly afraid. Until now. When he's called to North Carolina to consult on the case of an area serial killer, he finds himself in a deadly game. Cunning and lethal, the killer is always one step ahead of the law, and he's about to strike again. It will take all of Bowers's instincts and training to stop this man who calls himself the Illusionist. And just when the pieces start to come together, Bowers realizes they're not quite adding up. Can he unravel the pattern and save the next victim? Or will the Illusionist win the game by taking one of his opponent's pieces? Thrilling, chilling, and impossible to put down, The Pawn will hold suspense lovers in its iron grip until the very last page.
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.
