Notes

murder, betrayal, and the lost dream of Jonestown /
Candace Fleming.

356 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates :

black and white illustrations.

Summary: How did Jim Jones, the leader of Peoples Temple, convince more than 900 of his followers to commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced punch? Using first-person accounts, the author reveals Jones's humble origins as a child of the Depression to his founding of a group whose idealistic promises of equality and justice attracted thousands of followers. It details his relocation of Temple headquarters from California to an unsettled territory in Guyana, South America, which he dubbed "Jonestown" and his transformation of Peoples Temple into a nefarious experiment in mind-control. The book then depicts Jones's final act, persuading his followers to swallow fatal doses of cyanide -- to "drink the kool-aid," as it became known -- as a test of their ultimate devotion. This book traces, step by step, the ways in which one man slowly indoctrinated, then murdered, 900 innocent, well-meaning people. And how a few members, Jones' own son included, stood up to him -- but not before it was too late.