Road to Jonestown

In the 1950s, a young preacher from Indianapolis named Jim Jones preached a gospel spiced with Marxist ideas. His congregation, the Peoples Temple, was racially integrated, and he himself was a highly respected leader of the contemporary civil rights movement. After moving his church to California, he became involved in politics and soon became a prominent community leader. But behind the mask of a polished, charismatic pastor lurked an unspeakable darkness, leading to a tragedy that brought hundreds of people to their deaths.

Investigative journalist Jeff Guinn traces Jim Jones's life from childhood and his gradual radicalisation through extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing, to his decision to move his community of followers to a settlement in the jungle of the South American country of Guyana. In this compelling narrative, he reveals previously unknown information about the events leading up to the fateful 18th November 1978, when more than nine hundred people (including almost three hundred children) died after being ordered to drink a cyanide-laced beverage.

Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files, supplementing them with his own extensive research. He spoke to witnesses who had never been spoken to before and obtained new testimonies from those who survived the massacre. The Road to Jonestown, the eighth book in the orange true crime edition, is the definitive, comprehensive, and thorough study of one of history's most destructive cults of personality.

Edgar Award Nominee (2018)
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee – Best Biography (2017)

You can find the complete range of the orange True Crime edition at www.jota.cz/true-crime-edice