I listened to this on Audible, primarily on my commute back and forth to work. The quality of the audiobook was outstanding.

Jeff Guinn, who previously wrote on Charles Manson, sifted through thousands of FBI records concerning Jonestown and the People’s Temple, interviewed survivors and defectors, and even visited Jim Jones’ hometown in Indiana to interview his friends and family. The final product is a rich understanding of exactly how Jones’ church transformed from a small, storefront parish in Indianapolis into the Jonestown farming settlement in Guayana.

The book is roughly divided into three parts. The first examines Jones’ parents and his childhood in Indiana. The second part describes the formation and ascendency of The People’s Temple. The third part sheds light on Jonestown, the murder of U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan, the infamous mass suicide, and the aftermath.

While I did not find the lengthy detail of Jones’ parents and his childhood all that insightful, my favorite part concerned the rise of Jones’ church. In light of the events at Jonestown, the collective memory (as well as how most professional historians have approached the subject) has focused on the sensational and horrific aspects of the assassination of Ryan and the death of 908 church members in Guayana. This book provides the long view of The People’s Temple, which actually got its start as a small storefront church in downtown Indianapolis during the late-1950s/early-1960s. Here Guinn rightly portrays Jones as a champion for African-American civil rights and a stalwart of the integration movement in the city. Jones served an almost exclusively black parish and painstakingly helped each member deal with a extremely discriminatory and racist bureaucratic system in Indianapolis—from helping them resolve problems with electric bills to persuading local restaurant owners to integrate their lunch counters. Jones billed his church as a place where individuals could find traditional Christian worship services, but also focus on the “here and now” and find help for their day to day problems. Jones was also a devout discipline of socialism, and believed that Christianity and socialism were not only compatible, but best poised to improve the overall human condition.

From Indianpolis, Jones convinced many of his Indianapolis parish to move to Mendocino County in California where he started his first socialist commune. He later expanded to locales in Los Angeles and San Francisco. All of these churches were “Rainbow families”—that is, the congregation was represented by blacks, whites, Latinos, and Native Americans who were fully integrated in almost every sense of the word. It is also apparent that those who were in the lowest socioeconomic rungs of society—the elderly, the indigent, and the poor—benefitted materially from Jones’ church. However, some of the earliest defectors were among the more wealthy people who saw their property, bank accounts, and other possessions seized by the church through shady legal proceedings.

Without going into too much other detail, the last third of the book concerns Jones’ mental deterioration and drug addiction. He became increasingly paranoid both on the eve of forming Jonestown in Guayana, and more so once isolated within the jungle enclave.

Overall, I thought this was a fascinating book but thought that it would have benefitted if the author had spent more time delving specifically into Jones’ state of mind and what conditions may have caused his paranoia, etc. Highly recommended for those the least bit curious about Jim Jones, Jonestown, and his church and who would prefer a book that presents a fairly balanced perspective.