Jim jones biography book
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Jim Jones
American cult leader and mass murderer (–)
For other people with similar names, see Jim Jones (disambiguation).
James Warren Jones (May 13, &#;– November 18, ) was an American cult leader and mass murderer who founded and led the Peoples Temple between and In what Jones termed "revolutionary suicide", Jones and the members of his inner circle planned and orchestrated a mass murder-suicide in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, Jones and the events that occurred at Jonestown have had a defining influence on society's perception of cults.
As a child, Jones developed an affinity for Pentecostalism and a desire to preach. He was ordained as a Christian minister in the Independent Assemblies of God, attracting his first group of followers while participating in the Pentecostal Latter Rain movement and the Healing Revival during the s. Jones's första popularity arose from his joint campaign appearances with the movement's prominent leaders,
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The Road to Jonestown
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 s, 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 healin
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THE ROAD TO JONESTOWN
“Kool-Aid rather than equality is what the rest of the world remembers”—a searing account of what has since become a byword for religious cultism.
That Jim Jones () was a nut case—no term of psychiatric art but still true—was plain for most to see way back before he became infamous for the events of Nov. , , when he and more than of his followers died in their dystopian colony in the jungles of Guyana. Even so, Bay Area politicians gladly accepted his campaign contributions, some lauding him for his good works of social justice and concern for the poor. Those works and concern were genuine. Guinn (Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson, , etc.), who favors hard fact over psychobiographical speculation but indulges in a little of it all the same, notes that there was method to some of Jones’ madness, at least its less lethal manifestations. For instance, his Peoples Temple sermons in San Francisco were wandering, fuguelike, endless affairs, but they “d