Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} A Thousand Lives The Untold Story of Hope Deception and Survival at by Julia Scheeres StevenWarRan Research. October 23, 2011, Los Angeles Times, Book review: 'A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown';, Julia Scheeres charts the downfall of and the and the victims who were his followers, by Carolyn Kellogg, Before Julia Scheeres came along, Thom Bogue had not talked publicly about Jonestown . But when he realized that, like him, she had also been a troubled teen sent to a tropical religious camp — which she chronicled in the bestselling memoir "Jesus Land" — he decided to share his experiences. At 15, Tommy was sent from California to Guyana, where he lived for two years under the increasingly bizarre control of the Rev. Jim Jones. When Jones organized the assassination of U.S. Rep. and then compelled his flock to "revolutionary suicide" on Nov. 18, 1978, Tommy and his father were among the few who survived. A sister was not. On that day, 913 people died. If their final act cannot be explained, Scheeres seeks to understand how they came to be in that place in "A Thousand Lives." She weaves the intimate stories of a handful of diverse members of the Peoples Temple into the greater narrative of the doomed community. This is a work of deep empathy for so many lives lost in the name of different shades of hope. Teenage Tommy Bogue wanted a new start, but his discipline problems continued in Jonestown, where his offenses included growing watermelons he didn't want to share with the group. His father, Jim, a quiet jack-of-all-trades, hoped to mend his broken marriage by helping to build Jonestown; he was one of the earliest emigres, arriving in 1974. Nearly two decades earlier, Hyacinth Thrash first heard Jones in Indiana; she and her sister Zipporah Edwards became equally devoted to his dedication to racial equality and to his faith healing. Later, when Jones preached progressive socialism, sixty-something Edith Roller came on board. Educated, prickly and moved to activism in the late '60s, she kept a sanctioned journal of her experiences that included selling her beloved San Francisco apartment and writing of the political classes she planned to teach in Jonestown, not realizing how rudimentary the settlement was. Finally, there was Stanley Clayton, a troubled young African American man from West Oakland who found his first family in the church and was one of just two eyewitness survivors of what Scheeres calls the "mass murder-suicide." Using published reports and recently released FBI files, she shows that in the prior 14 months, the people of Jonestown were regularly abused, manipulated, deprived and deceived. In the name of the greater good, they handed over their assets before being flown to Guyana, often departing on short notice, and were divested of their passports after arrival. They were 32 miles from the nearest settlement, surrounded by thick jungle. A culture of fear was engendered. Jones read "the news" over camp loudspeakers, making up lies about violence at home and predators in the jungle. He convened the camp for overnight community meetings he called "White Nights" — sometimes discussions, sometimes calling for confessions and physical punishment, sometimes pretending to dispense poison-filled drinks. "I didn't feel I had achieved all I could do and I knew others had not," Roller wrote after one White Night suicide rehearsal. Scheeres continues, "Her diary and hundreds of other personal notes were part of the 50,000 pieces of paper the FBI collected in Jonestown after the killings," documentary evidence that Scheeres took a year to read in full. "They tell a tale of individuals who came to Guyana expecting Eden but found hell instead . not of a brainwashed people who killed themselves and their children 'at the snap of a finger' but of idealists who realized, too late, that they were trapped in a nightmare." Jones had once been admirable: As a 16-year-old street preacher in Indiana in 1948, he'd spoken up for racial equality. His churches were always filled with at least as many African American parishioners as whites, and his own family was multiracial. In some ways, the 1965 move of his church to California was motivated by a desire to be in a more progressive community; in others, by a strange paranoia. He chose Ukiah because it was said to be one of the nine places where humans could survive a nuclear attack. Sisters Hyacinth and Zipporah followed along. Like other older people drawn to the Peoples Temple, they were promised that the community would take care of them, but they did their part, canning and taking in boarders for a fee. The rural church community in Ukiah became the center of their lives, although Jones never got around to healing Hyacinth's bad hip. [Ooops.] Jones claimed to be a faith healer, but he augmented his talents with outright fraud. Some of the "sick" were church secretaries, others recurring players. Some unsuspecting participants were drugged so they would appear to collapse or rise at Jones' command. His career sped forward on two tracks: leftist politics and religious chicanery. To grow his ministry, he hit the road, busing around the country and picking up new believers with his gifted oratory and trickery in the pulpit. Moving to a larger base in San Francisco, his people were instrumental in electing progressive San Francisco Mayor and Supervisor , so much so that Jones was made head of the San Francisco Housing Authority . And when complaints about his ministry emerged, his political allies turned an unlistening ear. It was Jones' colorful behavior at Housing Authority meetings that first brought negative media attention his way. Reporters found unusual practices in his church: He separated wives and husbands, children and parents, in the name of the greater good, and executed punitive beatings before the congregation. They didn't know that Jones controlled parishioners who'd left or wanted to leave with blackmail: Many had signed their names to blank pages or penned false incriminating admissions when asked to prove their loyalty. [Such an act does prove loyalty, but only to a dark power. Giving blank power away to hurt you with "lies" requires a history of bad behavior.] A critical piece by Marshall Kilduff eventually ran in the magazine New West in 1977. When he caught wind of its contents, Jones fled to Guyana. The community had been slowly getting up and running before his arrival, but the influx that followed Jones was too much for its resources. People were housed in cramped dormitories, forced to labor for long hot hours with little reward, even though the temple had about $10 million in assets. Meanwhile, Jones descended into paranoia, spending hours on the shortwave radio ranting about the temple's former fierce defender, Tim Stoen. Although temple members were trained to see Jones as a parent — they called him Father and his wife Marceline Mother — he regularly slept with other women in the church as well as some of the young men. Tim Stoen's wife, Grace, was one of his lovers, and when she had a baby, Jones claimed it was his own, wresting control from her. As the reconciled Stoens tried to retrieve their son through the courts in the U.S. and Guyana, Scheeres explains, conditions at Jonestown deteriorated. Scheeres' concerns aren't with Jones but with how his actions affected the people around him. Jim Bogue planned his escape. Hyacinth worried about her sister's blithe acceptance of Jones' preaching. Stanley Clayton wondered if he could trust his wife, whom he still loved. The camp doctor, who had never completed his training, ordered sedatives and cyanide and planned to test his poison on the camp's few pigs. Scheeres convincingly portrays the members of this community as victims, not fools. It's hard to imagine how people might be so browbeaten, afraid and misled that they would bring about their own deaths — but Scheeres has made that terrifying story believable and human. [ The two qualities which the story actually lacks, damning Scheeres with loud praise.] 918 people forced to commit suicide – The story behind the viral photo explained. TikToker Tate Ova recently posted a video titled ‘Photos with a Disturbing Backstory.’ The first photo showed what appeared to be trash, but after zooming, Tate explained that it was an aerial photo of some of the 918 people forced to commit suicide by cult leader Jim Jones. Jim orchestrated the shocking deaths, telling his followers that they would meet ‘on the other side.’ Jonestown, or the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, was a remote settlement created by Jones in Guyana for his loyal followers after he fled San Francisco. Read on to find out how Jim Jones acquired such a massive following and how he convinced them to poison themselves for his cause. Jones portrayed himself as a socialist fighter for the oppressed. Jim Jones was always something of a loner. He held funerals for dead animals, claimed that he could fly, and had an unhealthy fascination with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement. In 1949, he married Marceline, a nurse four years his senior, and launched his career as a preacher. Jones named himself ‘Reverend Mr. Jim Jones’ and portrayed himself as a fighter for the oppressed. He promised a better life for African- Americans, and publicly pushed the agenda of social justice for black Americans. To sell the ruse, Jones and Marceline adopted a ‘rainbow family’ comprising of a black child, Jim Jones Jnr., two Korean orphans, and her child, Stephan. The People’s Temple, under Jones’ leadership, moved to Redwood Valley, California, before relocating to San Francisco. Jones opened a rehabilitation center for drug addicts, a free medical center, and built housing for the old and the homeless. To the naked eye, James was a revolutionary – a man who preached and practiced equality, regardless of people’s race or economic status. However, Jim Jones had a dark side, one he worked tirelessly to conceal. He convinced the staff to pose as sick or disabled people who he could later pretend to heal. Jones turned his followers into spies and asked them to source information he could use to blackmail people. “Some people see Christ in me,” Jones famously said. In the early 1970s, authorities began investigating Jones, prompting him to fashion an escape plan. In 1977, he convinced his followers to move to a remote jungle in Guyana, which according to Jones, was rich with food, had moderate temperatures, and had no mosquitos or snakes. Jones subjected his followers to starvation and threatened anyone who dared escape the commune with death. “Nothing grows and they’re starving,” Julia Scheeres, author of A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope , Deception and Survival at Jonestown, told History . “He has this inner circle that goes out and begs for food or gets rotting food from the market and brings it back to Jonestown. It was a big façade.” The jungle was unbearably hot and littered with snakes and all kinds of insects. Hard manual labor was the order of the day. Jones knew the people were unhappy, and to prevent rebellion, he separated people from their families. “It’s nothing like he promised,” Julia added. Jones also prevented anyone from talking as his voice played over the PA system installed throughout the commune. He told his followers that he’d placed people in the commune that would report anyone complaining. In doing so, he created an environment in which people couldn’t trust each other. “There’s no solidarity,” Julia continued. Individual attempts to escape were met with characteristic ruthlessness. Jones told his followers that even if they made it past the armed guards, survived the jungle, and made it to Guyana’s capital 240km away, he still retained their passports. Despite his best attempts, reports of the deplorable conditions in Jonestown reached Congressman Leo Ryan’s desk. He resolved to travel to Jonestown to investigate personally. Jones planned meticulously to deceive Leo: “Jones has been rehearsing people for weeks on what to say to Ryan and the media, even though they’ve been starving. He would have his inner circle, his lieutenants, go around and rehearse people: ‘What do you eat in Jonestown?’ ‘Well we eat lamb and steak and chicken.’ And Ryan is fooled by this. He actually believes that people are happy there.” However, before Leo left the commune, someone slipped one of his aides a note asking for help. “He [Jones] realizes the house of cards is starting to crumble,” Julia adds. Along with 14 defectors, Leo rushed to the airstrip where two planes arrived to ferry them to safety. Before they got on, however, Jones men shot at them, killing Leo Ryan, three media people, and one defector. “He [Jim] tells his people, it’s over, it’s all over, they’re coming for us, this is it, it’s time to transition to the other side,” Julia says. Jim Jones oversaw the suicides of over 900 people in one night. Jim Jones knew that the day would come when people would find out what he’d been up to in Jonestown. He’d held several mass suicide ‘rehearsals’ to see how people would respond. He’d learned that by starting with the children, the parents wouldn’t have no reason to live and would promptly follow suit. “It’s not suicide, it’s a revolutionary act,” Jones says on the massacre’s ‘death tape.’ Jonestown natives didn’t believe that the man they followed could kill them, but reality struck upon seeing their children frothing at the mouth and writhing due to the poison. “Babies were screaming, children were screaming and there was mass confusion,” Odell Rhodes, a survivor told The Washington Post . However, the ‘death tape’ portrayed it as a seamless exercise, as something the people did willingly. Julia Scheeres believes that Jones edited the video to make it seem that way: “He wanted the world to think this was some uniform decision, that they willingly killed themselves for socialism, to protest the inhumanity of capitalism – he gave various reasons for the mass death.” In total, 918 people died at Jonestown – 913 at the commune and five at the airstrip. The word ‘mass suicide’ is heavily contested, as many opine that Jones murdered his followers. ‘Mass murder’ seems to fit better, as, as Julia puts it, the 918 people killed didn’t have a choice: “People think they willingly died, but Jones gave them no choice. They were surrounded by a row of guards with crossbows, and then behind them there was another line of guards pointing guns. Meanwhile, Jones is exhorting them to come up and drink this potion to take them to the other side. So, living was never an alternative on that last night.” Many who died in Jonestown that night clutched each other in sort of a final embrace. The death scene showed piles of bodies laid next to paper cups and syringes (those who refused to take the poison were injected with it). Jones didn’t take the poison; instead, he instructed someone to shoot him in the head. A Thousand Lives. The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown. 4.5 • 50 Ratings $13.99. $13.99. Publisher Description. In 1954, a pastor named Jim Jones opened a church in Indianapolis called Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church. He was a charismatic preacher with idealistic beliefs, and he quickly filled his pews with an audience eager to hear his sermons on social justice. As Jones’s behavior became erratic and his message more ominous, his followers leaned on each other to recapture the sense of equality that had drawn them to his church. But even as the congregation thrived, Jones made it increasingly difficult for members to leave. By the time Jones moved his congregation to a remote jungle in Guyana and the US government began to investigate allegations of abuse and false imprisonment in Jonestown, it was too late. A Thousand Lives is the story of Jonestown as it has never been told. New York Times bestselling author Julia Scheeres drew from tens of thousands of recently declassified FBI documents and audiotapes, as well as rare videos and interviews, to piece together an unprecedented and compelling history of the doomed camp, focusing on the people who lived there. The people who built Jonestown wanted to forge a better life for themselves and their children. In South America, however, they found themselves trapped in Jonestown and cut off from the outside world as their leader goaded them toward committing “revolutionary suicide” and deprived them of food, sleep, and hope. Vividly written and impossible to forget, A Thousand Lives is a story of blind loyalty and daring escapes, of corrupted ideals and senseless, haunting loss. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AUG 29, 2011. While researching a novel set in a cult environment, Scheeres (Jesus Land) discovered the 50,000 pages of documents released by the FBI about the mass-murder suicide at Jonestown. She decided to change her project, and the result is this detailed, haunting account of the zealous young preacher from Indiana who convinced 1,000 people to move to a farm in Guyana and sacrifice their lives according to his vision. As Scheeres writes, Jim Jones "painted himself as modern Moses who would save his people. by leading them to the promised land of Jonestown." The book maintains some novelistic features, particularly excellent character development, as seen in the vividly described, though still elusive Jones. Jonestown residents like Tommy Bogue, a rebellious teenager frequently a victim of Jones' ire, and Edith Roller, passionate socialist and Jonestown chronicler, are among the good people caught up in Jones's twisted vision. Scheeres quotes heavily from the 45-minute recording Jones made while instructing his people to drink poison, and the final pages follow up with some of the survivors. Chilling and heart-wrenching, this is a brilliant testament to Jones's victims, so many of whom were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Opinions of a Wolf. Book Review: A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown by Julia Scheeres (Audiobook narrated by Robin Miles) Summary: On November 18, 1978, 918 people, mostly Americans, died on a commune named Jonestown and on a nearby airstrip in Guyana. The world came to know this event as that time that crazy cult committed mass suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid. However, that belief is full of inaccuracies. Scheeres traces the origins of Jonestown, starting with its leader, Jim Jones, and his Christian church in Indiana, tracing its development into the People’s Temple in California, and then into Jonestown in Guyana. Multiple members’ life stories are traced as well, including information from their family members who, perplexed, watched their families give everything over to Jones. Review: I have a fascination with cults and groupthink. In spite of not being born until the 1980s, I definitely was always vaguely aware of this cult that committed suicide in the 70s, always commentated on with great disdain. I had previously read Julia Scheeres’ memoir, Jesus Land , which I found to be beautifully and thoughtfully written (review). When I saw that she had written an investigative work of nonfiction, making the truth about Jonestown more accessible, I knew I had to read it. Scheeres possesses a great talent at presenting people and events as they are with understanding for common humanity but also disdain for atrocious acts. Scheeres excels at never turning a person into a monster, but rather exposing monstrous acts and asking how things became so messed up that something like that could happen. Scheeres clearly did painstaking research for this book, reading through the FBI’s extensive archives on the People’s Temple and Jim Jones, interviewing survivors, and interviewing family members of the deceased, not to mention reading members’ journals. The facts are presented in an engaging, storytelling, slightly non-linear way, which works excellently at drawing the reader in. The book starts on the boat to Guyana, then flashes back to the origins of Jim Jones. The members of People’s Temple are carefully presented as the well-rounded people they truly were with hopes and dreams and who made some mistakes. They are not ever presented as just a bunch of crazies. Even Jones is allowed a time as a preacher passionate for social justice before he turned into the control freak, whose paranoid delusions were exacerbated by drug addiction. Scheeres takes an event that it is far too easy to put the stamp of crazy on, and humanizes it, drawing out the gray areas. And this is all done while telling an engaging, well-written, factual story. There are an incredible number of facts in this book, and the reader learns them while hardly even realizing it, since this work of nonfiction is so readable. Among the things I never knew, I found out that the People’s Temple originally was a Christian church that was heavily socialist and then slowly turned into its own religion as Jones pulled away from the Bible, eventually declaring himself god. When Jones was in California, he was heavily involved in politics, sponsoring people such as Harvey Milk for office, and breaking voting laws by sending his church en masse to vote in districts they didn’t live in. Jones enacted weekly corporate punishment of individual members in front of all the other members. He was bisexual, having sex with both male and female members of the People’s Temple. He became obsessed with the idea of suicide to make a statement and routinely badgered the higher members of the People’s Temple into accepting suicide if he ordered it. He even tricked them multiple times into thinking that he had given them poisoned drinks, just to see who would obey and drink it. The members came to Jonestown in Guyana expecting a utopia, since Jones had lied to them, and instead got a struggling farm on the brink of disaster, being run by a man increasingly paranoid and delusional and ever more addicted to drugs. Once members were in Jonestown, they were not allowed to leave. And many wanted to. Last, but most important, the mass suicide was not a mass suicide. It was a murder-suicide. Some of the members committed suicide willingly, but others, including over 300 children, were force-fed or injected with the poison. Those who drank it drank it mixed with Flavor-Aid, a generic knock-off brand of Kool-Aid. It astounds me how much the facts of these events from as recent as 1978 are now misremembered in the collective consciousness, especially considering the fact that documentation such as the Jonestown death tape are available for free in the public archive. Overall, this book takes a misremembered event in recent history and exposes the facts in an incredibly readable work of nonfiction. Scheeres presents the people who died in Jonestown with empathy and understanding, seeking to tell their whole life story, rather than one moment. A fascinating look at a horrible event, and a moving reminder to never give too much power or faith to one person, and how very easy it is for groupthink to take over. Highly recommended. A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown by Julia Scheeres. Take one of the buses east from downtown Oakland, out along MacArthur Boulevard past my house, and stay on until the end of the line. There you’ll find Evergreen Cemetery. On the day after Independence Day, I drove out there with my daughter. I put her in my backpack carrier and traipsed around a bit until I found what I was looking for. I’d just finished A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown . In May of 2011, amid a storm of controversy, Evergreen unveiled a memorial with plaques containing the names of the 918 victims of the Jonestown massacre, including 409 unclaimed victims whose remains rest in the cemetery. The memorial sits on a hill under a shaded tree, overlooking the Eastmont Mall and the bay to the south. What’s most controversial about the memorial is that the plaque includes Jim Jones, the leader of the People’s Temple and the architect of the massive murder/suicide that took place in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978. To the families and friends of the victims, including Jones is like including the names of the terrorists on the 9/11 memorial. I knew very little about Jonestown beyond the “drink the Kool-Aid” phrase that has embedded itself in pop culture. What made me most interested in this book was the simple question: “How?” It’s what most people ask when they hear about Jonestown—how could so many people be “brainwashed” to such a degree that they’d voluntarily kill themselves? How could one man have that kind of power over so many? Armed with thousands of recently released FBI documents, Julia Scheeres recreates the events in a handful of lives that intertwined at Jonestown. She avoids psychoanalysis and never mentions cult mentality. In fact, Scheeres states upfront that she has specifically avoided using the word “cult,” a word that carries so much baggage and tends to lead to prejudgment. Rather, she tells the factual, human narrative of Jonestown; if you want to psychoanalyze, you can do that based on the story as it happened. James Warren Jones was born in Indiana in 1931. As a teenager with a gift for oration, he took to street preaching and quickly gained a following. In the mid 1950s, he opened the People’s Temple Christian Church Full Gospel in Indianapolis. What made Jones stand out, aside from his natural talent, was his message of social justice and equality. In an era of unapologetic systematic discrimination, Jones was a staunch integrationist. His church drew a mixed congregation of progressives and African Americans happy to finally be welcomed with open arms. Jones also adopted several mixed-raced children and referred to both his family and his church as his “rainbow family.” A decade later, however, he tested the loyalty of his flock by claiming foreknowledge of a nuclear holocaust and moving the congregation across the country to Ukiah, north of San Francisco. Many of his followers literally followed him. In Ukiah, the People’s Temple flourished. It attracted the disenfranchised, the poor, lost souls, recovering addicts, former criminals and idealists searching for the ideal. Jones’ message became increasingly socialistic. He criticized the government, conventional religion and the values of the broader society. His congregation began to believe that they were solitary in their righteousness, an island of truth. He also began to speak of himself as savior, going so far as to staging miracles during his religious services. Simultaneously, Jones drummed up a paranoia that their time was limited and the government would eventually come for them. Although he wasn’t speaking of it openly yet, he was sewing the seeds for his most infamous act—his “revolutionary suicide.” With his congregation under his spell, Jones began to build a settlement in the tropical jungles of Guyana, a small South American country. He promised it would be Utopia. The People’s Temple Agricultural Project, nicknamed Jonestown, was hard work for those who arrived first, but they came with optimistic hearts and built the settlement up for the full congregation. Those who arrived later found slightly better conditions, but far from ideal. It was hot, overcrowded, with shortages of food (not to mention other common comforts of American life). And they soon discovered that life in Jonestown came with a peculiar set of laws, including corporal punishment for anyone who disobeyed. Jones treated his congregation to hours of sermonizing daily, which he did over the PA system from the air-conditioned comfort of his private cabin, often heavily medicated. Although Jonestown had a strict anti-drug policy for the congregants, Jones himself had a growing addiction. Jones determined who would marry whom. Although there was a strict law against sex outside of marriage, Jones had sexual relationships with both men and women. He spoke of these openly, rationalizing that he was performing the duties of a leader. In one case, he fathered a child with a married congregant. Jones also stepped up his program of paranoia. One of his more duplicitous tactics was to instruct his men to go into the jungle and fire their guns, simulating an attack. He then ordered everyone else to flee the settlement. Several times, the settlers lay in the jungle for hours on end, believe their homes were under siege. He also held what he called “White Nights,” during which Temple members would act out his plan for revolutionary suicide, sometimes drinking what they had been told was poison as a test of their loyalty. Some of the settlers were in it for good, buying into Jones and his message, but very few still clung to their hopes that everything would turn around. Many were simple prisoners. This was no Utopia. In November of 1978, after friends of Jonestown residents raised concerns back in the States, California Congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown with a crew of reporters to investigate claims of Human Rights abuse. It didn’t take long for the façade of a happy, peaceful commune to fall away. Church members began asking Ryan to take them with him. As Ryan made plans to help, he was attacked by a knife-wielding Temple member. The attack was thwarted, but it caused a quick departure by Ryan’s party. Then, as they boarded their plane at the landing strip, members of Jones’ security detail pulled up and opened fire on the group, killing Ryan and four others. When word reached Jonestown, the members of the Temple were told that this was their final moment—no government would let this slide. They gathered in the pavilion where they listened to Jones one last time. The children were the first to be murdered. 303 children were killed, some by their parents, by way of injection. Members of the congregation who tried to flee or refused were forcibly injected or shot. One by one, members stumbled out of the pavilion and collapsed on the lawn in convulsions, some lying down to die in groups with friends or families. By the time it was over, 918 people, including Jim Jones, lay dead. Jones’ final sermon was captured on a 45-minute tape, which he apparently edited on the fly. It’s an incredibly difficult listen. Jones sounds heavily medicated as he slurs his last rambling sermon. But what’s most disturbing is the distinct transition from the beginning of the tape, where crying children are audible in the background, to later when it’s just Jones and a small group of followers. It’s hard to understand how anyone can succumb to the call of such a madman. But, standing over the marble plaques at Evergreen Cemetery with my one-year-old daughter, it was unfathomable how any person could willingly take the life of their own child. One could lay out a spectrum of evil at Jonestown. On one end would be Jim Jones. If Jones actually believed he were some kind of messiah, if he truly were insane, he would be slightly less despicable. But he was a fraud, a charlatan, a hypocrite. He willfully misled those who put their trust in him. And along with him, hopefully receiving their due punishment in hell if it exists, are the parents who killed their own children. Then the mindless followers, who simply did what they were told. Then the naïve, those who were possibly crazy themselves, those who were duped, trapped by their own hopes until it was too late. Finally, the least culpable and the true victims, the innocent children. Was it evil? Was it madness? The spirit of the ’60s gone awry? A glitch in the human brain? Sheeres brings a wealth of new information to the Jonestown story. But more importantly, she traces the stories of a handful of individuals who lived (and some died) at Jonestown. These were people from different backgrounds, with different stories, all seeking their own version of a better life. For many of them, the Temple at first provided what it promised—a stable, supportive community that believed in equality and idealism. It’s difficult to draw an overarching conclusion from what happened in Guyana. And more than anything, this is what Sheeres brings to the story: It isn’t the story of one cult, one group of people who collectively went insane. It is the story of nearly a thousand individuals, one thousand lives, differing, varied, unique, who found an end in Jonestown.