A Thousand Lives : The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown (Hardcover)

from kwbridge

I was a kid when this happened but remember being stunned by how many died. I never really thought much about the people who died except as crazy cultists. This book helped me see them as real people and feel compassion ... so many were idealists who yearned for a better world and believed Jones ...

from tututhefirst

It's been 33 years since this tragedy occured, in which 914 people died in a mass suicide/murder scheme in November 1986, and the story still is repugnant to me. I can perhaps understand that individuals might choose to commit suicide for a variety of reasons, but I'm not able to comprehend parti...

from Florinda

The story of Peoples Temple still warrants attention, and in A Thousand Lives, Julia Scheeres tells it with a degree of thoroughness and detail that it's rarely been given before. Although most of the principals of Peoples Temple died with it and many of its own records were destroyed before they...

from greeniezona

I heard about this book in an article calling people out for using the phrase "drinking the Kool-aid" without knowing the full story of its origins. The article must have been convincing because I put this book on my to-read list and it ended up being a part of my Fenner fundraiser shopping spree...

from arubabookwoman

We've all heard the phrase "drink the Kool Aid", but sometimes tend to forget its tragic origin in the mass suicide at Jonestown in Guyana. In A Thousand Lives Julia Scheeres's aim is to help the reader understand the reasons that people were drawn to Jim Jones and his church, why they followed h...