{
"id": 460058,
"slug": "the-road-to-jonestown-jeff-guinn",
"nstc": null,
"title": "The Road to Jonestown",
"subtitle": null,
"collection_title": null,
"collection_part_number": null,
"annotation": null,
"description": "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.\n\nIn this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones\u2019s 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\u2014including almost three hundred infants and children\u2014after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.\n\nGuinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones\u2019s 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\u2019s orders. The Road to Jonestown is \u201cthe most complete picture to date of this tragic saga, and of the man who engineered it\u2026The result is a disturbing portrait of evil\u2014and a compassionate memorial to those taken in by Jones\u2019s malign charisma\u201d (San Francisco Chronicle).",
"imprint": null,
"language_code": "eng",
"original_language_code": null,
"page_count": 544,
"duration_seconds": null,
"publication_date_first": "2018-01-01",
"publication_date_latest": "2018-01-01",
"cover_url": null,
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"created_at": "2025-09-19T13:55:40+00:00",
"updated_at": "2025-10-29T00:38:25+00:00",
"publisher": {
"id": 4234,
"slug": "simon-schuster-us",
"name": "Simon & Schuster US",
"created_at": "2025-09-19T12:38:52+00:00",
"updated_at": "2025-09-19T15:10:09+00:00"
},
"contributors": [],
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}