All about Jim Jones and the people who followed him, this book goes into a lot of detail about just about everyone and everything that led up to the group suicide in Guyana back in the late 1970s.
I didn’t know much about the group or Jim Jones before I read the book. Growing up in the Bay Area in the 1970’s it seemed like I was closer than I knew to the activities of the Peoples Temple, and it was intriguing to read about their move to Ukiah and what they were doing there.
The book is extremely well-researched, and if anything it goes into almost too much detail. I sometimes lost track of who was who with so many members coming and going. The book took a deeper look at what motivated the group, and the long history of religion for Jim Jones pointed at a start that was very different from how it ended.
I thought that the book did a good job avoiding titillation and instead showed just how a huge group of people could end up following a strong personality like Jones. In an effort to simplify the narrative it seems like many things that were fairly important got lost or deliberately excluded.
The book doesn’t do a lot of judging, but rather points out a wide range of things that may have led to the tragedy. For example, some members stayed part of the group because they strongly believed in the socialism that the group practiced. The group (and Jim Jones) seemed to think that if they showed themselves living peacefully and equitably in a socialist model that it might lead to a greater change worldwide.
But things slowly go off the rails, and it was interesting to read just how it happened.
The writing style of this book is a little old fashioned (I read the word “chums” for the first time in a long time), and I felt like it could have been written a bit more smoothly to keep the reader’s interest as the accounting and politics often went pretty deep. Overall, though, it was a pretty good book and I’m glad I read it.
Next I am reading The Drawing of Three by Stephen King.
