The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

Jeff Guinn

Apr 2017 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

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).

Ratings and reviews

PRETTY INTERESTING READ ABOUT JONES TOWN HE WAS THE MOST SICK EVIL MAN WHO MADE 900 PEOPLE COMMITTED SUICIDE I Watched A DOCUMENTRY ON THIS AND THEY PUT THE LIVE RECORDING OFF JIM JONES GIVING A SPEACH WHEN GIVING THE POISON DRINKS OUT TO THE PEOPLE IT WAS VERY DISTURBING PEOPLE BEGGING FOR THERE LIVES WHAT A HORRIBLE MAN

The foremost description of the life and times of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. It takes a neutral view without being apologetic of Jones and what led him to murder over 900 people in Jonestown and beyond. One of the best quotes is towards the end: "Jonestown deaths quickly became renowned not as a grandly defiant revolutionary gesture, but as the ultimate example of human gullibility." That's unfair, in my opinion. When you get to that point, you've found yourself disagreeing with the common theory that these were gullible and insane people. These were people who were slowly and methodically broken down and made weary by a charismatic leader who likely had no intention of killing his flock years before without drug abuse and the paranoia that comes from amphetamine use. Sure he had some questionable mental issues which is obvious in his early life, but would mass suicide have been a possible outcome without Jones' drug abuse? The reader is left to interpret that position. From my understanding, it's unlikely. This is a long book, but it's worth a read. It's easy to consume and doesn't confuse the reader with too many names, which would be easy to do when considering the thousands of people who had contact with the Peoples Temple. I highly recommend this book if you'd like to better understand charismatic leadership and the people who are willing to follow without questioning.

Although I knew quite a bit about Jonestown from just being alive when this all happened to having watched a couple of documentaries on it this book taught me so much more. I was not aware of their previous "compund" in Ukiah or even the origins of Jim Jones. Everything seems to focus on the tragic events in Guyana and whilst they are probably the most dramatic portions of the story the whole tale is almost fantastical in its sheer complexity and the slow build to the final denouement. It was incredibly interesting to read about Jim Jones early life, his obsession with death and religion started very early and I am sure this was the only way he could really escape his home life. He definitely had a neglectful upbringing which I am sure contributed to his final breakdown and I am pretty sure he suffered a complete mental break caused by his ever increasing drug dependencies. Even more interesting where his efforts to help minorities and the downtrodden. You can definitely see why people latched on to him in the early days, he genuinely didn;t see colour and hated that others did and treated people differently as a result. Certainly he understood what it was like to be seen as "less than" just because he existed and he put this to good use in the early days. If only he had followed a different path and not allowed power to corrrupt him he could have a great proponent of change, instead he became a proponent for something worse than what society was doing to people. Mr Guinn has certainly carried out meticulous research and nothing here is sensationalised, it is what it is and is told in such a matter of fact way that it makes the events ever more terrifying. You do wonder why these people stayed with him, especially after things begin to unravel in Ukiah. Then you realise they trust this man, they believe this man, he has "saved" them from the abuse and poverty they were suffering from and if things are going off the rails a little bit it still isn't as bad as it was before. It certainly dispelled some of my misconceptions about how it all happened and educated me on things I had no idea about. Especially the politics of the 1960s and the corruption that felt eerily like today. This is an extremely interesting read and definitely more of a Social History than a salacious pick the highlights type of book. This review has been a long time coming. I actually read this book between the 19th and 25th April 2020 so my memory is a bit foggy about parts of the book, but only a little bit as it has really stuck with me. Fortunately, I have a notebook where I jot some initial thoughts on the book and an overall ranking so between the book blurb and that I did have a reasonable handle on what I thought at the time of reading.

About the author

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.