Road to Jonestown
Jim Jones and Peoples Temple
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Road to Jonestown
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Narrated by:
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George Newbern
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Written by:
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Jeff Guinn
About this listen
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 1950s, 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 healing, before the fateful decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died—including almost three hundred infants and children—after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.
Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. The Road to Jonestown is “the most complete picture to date of this tragic saga, and of the man who engineered it…The result is a disturbing portrait of evil—and a compassionate memorial to those taken in by Jones’s malign charisma” (San Francisco Chronicle).
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 530
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 459
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What the critics say
2018 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)
What listeners say about Road to Jonestown
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Kaitlynn Pearmain
- 2018-06-15
great book
the book was good, narrator sounded too happy for such a sensitive subject, he should be narrating kids books haha
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Shawn Hartigan
- 2021-05-04
Incredibly thorough and informative.
This was one of the most complete and thorough investigations I have read so far. Details, about even Jones' smallest interactions, were investigated and returned upon when pertinent. At times a bit labouring, but ultimately adding to the complete picture of the events. Highly suggested for the historical reader.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Peter
- 2020-10-27
A Chilling Tale of Ambition and Destruction
George Newbern does a fantastic job taking us through the life and eventual death of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. Was Jones a good man who fell, or was he doomed from the start? Were, perhaps things different, the corruption would not have set in? Was the corruption truly there from the start? The Road to Jonestown takes you, step by step, through every part of the journey, so you may find yourself drawing your own conclusions. Past factual errors often cited about Jonestown are accounted for, and the benefit of hindsight decades after the incident truly helps contextualize exactly what happens. The seemingly maddening aspects of the Peoples Temple, such as the tumor healings, are helped to be explained by the more personal, helpful things the cult also engaged in. The lunacy is contextualized with the tangible good, which is what helped lead so many to follow the road... to Jonestown.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2018-06-28
Long
While I appreciate the attention to detail, it was very long winded and could cut down considerably.
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