As many of us on LT remember, "pastor" Jim Jones established a settlement in Guyana called Jonestown. On November 18, 1978, he coerced the entire settlement (over 900 people, minus a few who escaped) into drinking Flavor-Aid laced with cyanide and other drugs, dying excruciating deaths. How on God's green earth could someone have so much power over others?!!! Seeing the pictures of the masses of people laying on the grounds of the compound is one of the "flashbulb memories" of my childhood. Reiterman has written a stunning book which reveals the all-too-fallible personality behind the murder-suicides.

Reiterman has more than earned the street cred to write this story. He is a journalist who covered the People's Temple for over a year before the massacre. He visited Jonestown with Congressman Leo Ryan, and was wounded in the airstrip shootings which killed Ryan (perpetrated by Temple members). He has done his homework as well, with massive amounts of interviews of people with all levels of involvement in the cult. His portait of Jim Jones is especially revealing, what psychologists call a "psychological autopsy". I can verify that it is topnotch. Reiterman chillingly builds the madness, piece by insurmountable piece. The strategies used by Jones are similar to what abusive husbands use only on a grander scale. Reading this book is like being on an out-of-control roller-coster with no brakes. We see the ending coming and it is the stuff of nightmares. A blurb on the back of the book puts it succinctly.. "carefully compiled and completely horrifying". ( )

I read about this book on BookSlut, and I have to admit Crispin was right...a fascinating page turner written by one of the reporters who was there. Meticulously researched...an excellent read! ( )

Tim Reiterman was one of the journalists who accompanied Congressman Leo Ryan to Jonestown in November of 1978. His book not only examines what happened there, but goes back to the childhood of Jim Jones and the beginnings of the movement known as the Peoples Temple so as to "capture the lure of the Temple, to convey the thinking and personalities of not just disgruntled defectors but also of the heartbroken loyalists with something positive to preserve and remember -- and to unmask the real Jim Jones. And I wanted to humanize them all to get at the truth, to make the ending comprehensible" (5). To achieve this goal, he and his co-author John Jacobs did 800+ interviews, reviewed tens of thousands of pages of documents, tape recordings, video, and film. The result is a phenomenal book.

What really interested me the most, I think, was Reiterman's examination, starting with Jones' boyhood, of how exactly Jones learned to get others to do exactly what he wanted them to do. The people who came to the Peoples Temple and who became followers of Jones early on weren't coerced or forced into it -- they all had various reasons for being there and for embracing Jones' message. However, it was what happened once they were inside that matters, as little by little Jones began to isolate them from the rest of the world so that they came to depend solely on him and the movement. Reiterman shows clearly how this occurred, and how Jones, along with his top tier of chosen people, manipulated things from inside.

He also shows how when there were attacks on the movement (from the media, "defectors", etc.), Jones' paranoia only made things worse, causing him to do and say things that only heightened their attackers' interests in the Peoples Temple. It was this type of paranoia that led Jones to Guyana and Jonestown and ultimately to the horrifying events of November 1978.

The narrative is at times chilling, but very clear, based mostly on first-hand evidence and testimony. I very highly recommend this book to anyone even remotely interested in Jonestown, the Peoples Temple movement or in how otherwise intelligent people might find themselves in this sort of predicament.

Excellent reading; long, but well worth every second. ( )

I could not put this down. Tim Reiterman, who was one of the journalists shot at Jonestown along with Cong. Leo Ryan, says in the prologue that he wrote the book because he wanted to understand what lured hard-working, good-hearted people into People's Temple. In his words, they were not "masochists and half-wits". And this book is a tribute to them, because he goes to great lengths to give us background not just on Jim Jones, but on some of those who joined, some who defected, some who died at Jonestown. It's a heartbreaking story, but a very compelling book. If you are interested in a very complete picture of what happened and the people who were involved, this is really the book to read. ( )