On November 18, 1978, over 900 people died in a murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, drinking cyanide-spiked Flavor-Aid under the rule of Jim Jones, a charismatic preacher espousing racial harmony–and harboring paranoid ideas.
“Drinking the Kool-Aid” has entered our slang as a disparaging dismissal of people who follow others without thinking. But such a massive tragedy turned on much more complex machinations. If you wonder how anyone could follow such a man or participate in such a horrifying act, these books chillingly and heartbreakingly show how people longing for social and racial justice were deceived into a trap with no way out.
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Reporter Reiterman, wounded in the Jonestown shooting that also killed Congressman Leo Ryan, offers an exhaustive history of Jim Jones, the People’s Temple, and the motives of Jones’ followers. You can check out this title as eBook on OverDrive/Libby.
A detailed chronicle of Jim Jones’ career and the rise and fall of the People’s Temple. You can also check out this title as eBook on OverDrive/Libby or as eAudio on OverDrive/Libby.
Delving into the lives of victims and survivors as well as Jim Jones’ career, Scheeres sympathetically and accessibly explores day-to-day life in Jonestown and the behind-the–scenes scheming that culminated in a massacre.