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A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown Kindle Edition
A Thousand Lives is the story of Jonestown as it has never been told. New York Times bestselling author Julia Scheeres drew from tens of thousands of recently declassified FBI documents and audiotapes, as well as rare videos and interviews, to piece together an unprecedented and compelling history of the doomed camp, focusing on the people who lived there.
The people who built Jonestown wanted to forge a better life for themselves and their children. In South America, however, they found themselves trapped in Jonestown and cut off from the outside world as their leader goaded them toward committing “revolutionary suicide” and deprived them of food, sleep, and hope. Vividly written and impossible to forget, A Thousand Lives is a story of blind loyalty and daring escapes, of corrupted ideals and senseless, haunting loss.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFree Press
- Publication dateOctober 11, 2011
- File size13890 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Jonestown has become a grim metaphor for blind obedience—for fanaticism without regard to consequences. In the aptly titled A Thousand Lives, Julia Scheeres captures the humanity within this terrible story, vividly depicting individuals trapped in a vortex of hope and fear, faith and loss of faith, not to mention the changes sweeping America in the 1960s and '70s. She makes their journeys to that unfathomable tragedy all too real; what was truly incredible, she shows, was the escape from death by a tiny handful of survivors. Drawing on a mountain of sources compiled and recently released by the FBI, she changes forever the way we think about this dark chapter of our history."—T.J. Stiles, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
"Almost unbearably chilling... but tempered with enormous sympathy." --Boston Globe
"Julia Scheeres' A Thousand Lives... tells the tragic tale of Jonestown -- in its way, a peculiarly American apocalypse." --L.A. Times
“This the best book in a good long time on the dangers of fanatical faith, the power of group belief and lure of deep certainties. These demons that haunt the human mind can only be countered by facing them with courage and honesty – this is precisely what Scheeres has done.” --Ethan Watters, author of Crazy Like Us
"Her account is notably levelheaded in a field where sensationalism, conspiracy theories and bizarre reasoning run free." --Salon
"Scheeres shows great compassion and journalistic skill in reconstructing Jonestown’s last months and the lives of many Temple members (including a few survivors)...[A Thousand Lives is a] well-written, disturbing tale of faith and evil." --Kirkus
"Riveting...You will not be able to look away. " --The San Francisco Chronicle
"A work of deep empathy for so many lives lost in the name of different shades of hope." --L.A. Times
"It is important to get a story like this out there and remind the public about it once in a while, so that history like this does not repeat itself." --Gather.com
"The first solid history of the Temple...less a warning about the dangers of religosity than a clear headed chronology." --San Francisco magazine
“I thought I knew the story of Jonestown, but in reading A Thousand Lives discovered that much of what I'd read and heard was pure myth. Through meticulous research, beautiful writing and great compassion, Scheeres presents an engrossing account of how Jim Jones' followers--eager parishioners who yearned for a more purposeful life and were willing to work for it--found themselves trapped in a nightmare of unfathomable proportions. This book serves as testimony to the seductiveness of religious fervor, and how in the wrong hands it can be used to nefarious ends. It is also a poignant and unforgettable tribute to those who lost their lives and to those few who survived.”-- Allison Hoover Bartlett, author of the bestselling The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession
"Chilling and heart-wrenching, this is a brilliant testament to Jones's victims, so many of whom were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time." --Publisher's Weekly, starred review
A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2011
A New York Times Editor's Choice
"For those who can picture only the gory end of Jonestown, Julia Scheeres offers a heartbreaking and often inspiring glimpse of what might have been. Her masterfully told and exhaustively researched A Thousand Lives should stand not only as the definitive word on Jones’ horrific machinations, but on the utopian dreams of a bygone generation. A worthy follow-up to her superb memoir, Jesus Land." --Tom Barbash, author of On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, and 9/11: A Story of Loss and Renewal
“The definitive book on Jonestown and the Danse Macabre of suicide and murder orchestrated by mad Jim Jones. Julia Scheeres takes us by the hand and leads us gently, inexorably, into the darkness.” –Tim Cahill, author of Lost in My Own Backyard
"Julia Scheeres's book sheds startling new light on this murky, mini-chapter of contemporary history....the narrative is [a] compelling...psychological mystery." --The Wall Street Journal
A Boston Globe Best Book of 2011
"A gripping account of how decent people can be taken in by a charismatic and crazed tyrant." --New York Times Book Review
"The revelations of [A Thousand Lives] shine through our everyday relationships to war, our politics, our beliefs and our own actions. This is a strikingly relevant book ." --San Francisco Sunday Chronicle Book Review
"How do you tell a new story about Jim Jones and his followers, when everyone knows how it ends? ...Julia Scheeres’ riveting A Thousand Lives gives us reason to look again. " --Miami Herald
From the Inside Flap
Had I walked by 1859 Geary Boulevard in San Francisco when Peoples Temple was in full swing, I certainly would have been drawn to the doorway.
I grew up in a strict Christian family with an adopted black brother; race and religion were the dominant themes of my childhood. In our small Indiana town, David and I often felt self-conscious walking down the street together. Strangers scowled at us, and sometimes called us names. I wrote about the challenges of our relationship in my memoir, Jesus Land.
Suffice it to say, David and I would have been thrilled and amazed by Peoples Temple, a church where blacks and whites worshipped side by side, the preacher taught social justice instead of damnation, and the gospel choir transported the congregation to a loftier realm. We longed for such a place.
Unfortunately, the laudable aspects of Peoples Temple have been forgotten in the horrifying wake of Jonestown.
I stumbled onto writing this book by accident. I was writing a satirical novel about a charismatic preacher who takes over a fictional Indiana town, when I remembered Jim Jones was from Indiana, and Googled him. I learned that the FBI had released fifty thousand pages of documents, including diaries, meeting notes, and crop reports, as well as one thousand audiotapes that agents found in Jonestown after the massacre, and that no one had used this material to write a comprehensive history of the doomed community. Once I started digging through the files, I couldn't tear myself away.
It was easy to set my novel aside. I believe that true stories are more powerful, in a meaningful, existential way, than made-up ones. Learning about other peoples' lives somehow puts one's own life in sharper relief.
Aside from race and religion, there were other elements of the Peoples Temple story that resonated with me. When David and I were teenagers, our parents sent us to a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic that had some uncanny parallels with Jonestown. I could empathize with the residents' sense of isolation and desperation.
You won't find the word cult in this book, unless I'm directly citing a source that uses the word. My aim here is to help readers understand the reasons that people were drawn to Jim Jones and his church, and how so many of them ended up dying in a mass-murder suicide on November 18, 1978. The word cult only discourages intellectual curiosity and empathy. As one survivor told me, nobody joins a cult.
To date, the Jonestown canon has veered between sensational media accounts and narrow academic studies. In this book, I endeavor to tell the Jonestown story on a grander, more human, scale.
Julia Scheeres
Berkeley, California, March 24, 2011
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Had I walked by 1859 Geary Boulevard in San Francisco when Peoples Temple was in full swing, I certainly would have been drawn to the doorway.
I grew up in a conservative Christian family with an adopted black brother; race and religion were the dominant themes of my childhood. In our small Indiana town, David and I often felt self-conscious walking down the street together. Strangers scowled at us, and sometimes called us names. I wrote about the challenges of our relationship in my memoir, Jesus Land.
Suffice it to say, David and I would have been thrilled and amazed by Peoples Temple, a church where blacks and whites worshipped side by side, the preacher taught social justice instead of damnation, and the gospel choir transported the congregation to a loftier realm. We longed for such a place.
Unfortunately, the laudable aspects of Peoples Temple have been forgotten in the horrifying wake of Jonestown.
I stumbled onto writing this book by accident. I was writing a satirical novel about a charismatic preacher who takes over a fictional Indiana town, when I remembered Jim Jones was from Indiana, and Googled him. I learned that the FBI had released fifty thousand pages of documents, including diaries, meeting notes, and crop reports, as well as one thousand audiotapes that agents found in Jonestown after the massacre, and that no one had used this material to write a comprehensive history of the doomed community. Once I started digging through the files, I couldn’t tear myself away.
It was easy to set my novel aside. I believe that true stories are more powerful, in a meaningful, existential way, than made-up ones. Learning about other people’s lives somehow puts one’s own life in sharper relief.
Aside from race and religion, there were other elements of the Peoples Temple story that resonated with me. When David and I were teenagers, our parents sent us to a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic that had some uncanny parallels with Jonestown. I could empathize with the residents’ sense of isolation and desperation.
You won’t find the word cult in this book, unless I’m directly citing a source that uses the word. My aim here is to help readers understand the reasons that people were drawn to Jim Jones and his church, and how so many of them ended up dying in a mass-murder suicide on November 18, 1978. The word cult only discourages intellectual curiosity and empathy. As one survivor told me, nobody joins a cult.
To date, the Jonestown canon has veered between sensational media accounts and narrow academic studies. In this book, I endeavor to tell the Jonestown story on a grander, more human, scale.
Julia Scheeres
Berkeley, California, March 24, 2011
© 2011 Julia Scheeres|CHAPTER 1
AN ADVENTURE
The journey up the coastline was choppy, the shrimp trawler too far out to get a good look at the muddy shore. While other passengers rested fitfully in sleeping bags spread out on the deck or in the berths below, fifteen-year-old Tommy Bogue gripped the slick railing, bracing himself against the waves. He’d already puked twice, but was determined not to miss a beat of this adventure. The constellations soared overhead, clearer than he’d ever seen them. He wiped salt spray from his eyes with an impatient hand and squinted at the horizon. He was still boy enough to imagine a pirate galleon looming toward them, the Jolly Roger flapping in the Caribbean breeze.
This was his first sea journey. His first trip outside the United States. He squinted at South America as it blurred by, vague and mysterious, imagining the creatures that roamed there. A few years earlier, he’d devoured DC Comics’ Bomba, The Jungle Boy series, and now imagined himself the hero of his own drama.
The very name of his destination was exotic: Guyana. None of his school friends had ever heard of it, nor had he before his church established an agricultural mission there. After his pastor made the announcement, Tommy read and reread the Guyana entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica until he could spout Guyanese trivia to anyone who showed the slightest interest in what the lanky, bushy-haired teen had to say. Aboard the Cudjoe, he ticked off this book knowledge to himself. Jaguars. Howler monkeys. One of the world’s largest snakes, the green anaconda, growing up to twenty feet long and reaching 350 pounds. The country was home to several of the world’s largest beasts: the giant anteater, the giant sea otter, the giant armadillo, the fifteen-foot black caiman. He knew a few things about the strangeness surrounding him, and those few things comforted him.
The plane ride from San Francisco to Georgetown had been another first for Tommy. He sat next to another teenager from his church, Vincent Lopez, and the two boys took turns gaping out the small convex window as they soared over the Sierra Nevada, the Great Plains, the farm belt—the entire breadth of America. The cement mass of New York City astounded him; skyscrapers bristled toward every horizon. At JFK International Airport, Pastor Jones, who was going down to visit the mission himself, kept a tight hand on the boys as he herded them toward their connecting flight.
Everything about Tommy Bogue was average—his height, his build, his grades—except for his penchant for trouble. His parents couldn’t control him. Neither could the church elders. He hated the long meetings the congregation was required to attend, and was always sneaking off to smoke weed or wander the tough streets of the Fillmore District. Ditching church became a game, one he was severely punished for, but which proved irresistible.
They’d only told him two days ago that he was being sent to the mission field. His head was still spinning with the quickness of it all. The counselors told him he should feel honored to be chosen, but he was wise to them. He overheard people talking about manual labor, separation from negative peers, isolation, culture shock: All these things were supposed to be good for him. He knew he was being sent away, but at least he’d get out of the never-ending meetings, and more important, he’d see his father, for the first time in two years.
His dad left for Guyana in 1974, one of the pioneers. He’d called home a few times over the mission’s ham radio, and in brief, static-filled reports, he sounded proud of what the settlers had accomplished: clearing the bush by hand, planting crops, building cottages. Tommy was eager to see it himself.
Finally, as the sun blazed hot and high overhead, the Cudjoe shifted into low gear and swung toward land. The other church members crowded Tommy as the boat nosed up a muddy river, the wake lifting the skirts of the mangroves as it passed. In the high canopy, color flashed: parrots, orchids, bromeliads.
The travelers slipped back in time, passing thatched huts stilted on the river banks and Amerindians, who eyed them warily from dug-out canoes. This was their territory. Late in the afternoon, the passengers arrived at a village named Port Kaituma and excitement rippled through them. The deck hands tied the Cudjoe to a pole in the water and Tommy helped unload cargo up the steep embankment. Pastor Jones, who’d spent most of the trip secluded in the deck house, welcomed them to the village as if he owned it. There wasn’t much to it beyond a few stalls selling produce and secondhand clothes. As he spoke, Tommy listened attentively along with the others; Guyana was a fresh start for him, and he planned to stay out of trouble. Jones told the small group that the locals were grateful for the church’s assistance—the mission’s farm would put food on their tables.
After a short delay, a tractor pulling a flatbed trailer motored up and the newcomers climbed aboard with their gear. The tractor slipped and lurched down the pitted road to the mission, and the passengers grabbed the high sides and joked as if they were on a hayride. All were in good spirits.
At some point, Tommy noticed the squalor: the collapsing shanties, the naked brown kids with weird sores and swollen bellies, the dead dogs rotting where they fell. The trenches of scummy water. The stench. The mosquitoes whining in his ears. The landscape didn’t jibe with the slide shows Pastor Jones had shown at church, which made Guyana look like a lush resort.
Tommy didn’t point out these aberrations, but turned to listen to Pastor Jones, who raised his voice above the tractor’s thrumming diesel engine. He was boasting, again, about how everything thrived at the mission. About the ice cream tree, whose fruit tasted like vanilla ice cream. About the protective aura surrounding the Church’s property: There was no sickness there, no malaria or typhoid, no snakes or jungle cats ventured onto it. Not one mishap whatsoever. The adults nodded and smiled as they listened. Tommy turned toward the jungle again. The bush was so dense he couldn’t see but a yard in before it fell away into darkness.
The tractor veered down a narrow road and passed through a tight stand of trees. The canopy rose two hundred feet above them. The light dimmed as they drove through this tree tunnel, as if they’d entered a candle-lit hallway and someone was blowing out the candles one by one. The air was so still it bordered on stagnant. Tommy glanced behind them at the receding brightness, then ahead, to where his father waited.
They drove into a large clearing. Here were a few rustic buildings, and beyond them, rows and rows of plants. A dozen or so settlers stood along the entry road, and the two groups shouted joyfully to each other. Tommy didn’t immediately see his dad. He was disappointed, but unsurprised; his old man was probably nose to the grindstone, as always. He lifted his duffle bag onto his shoulder and jumped onto the red earth, happy to have arrived, at long last, in Jonestown.
© 2011 Julia Scheeres
Product details
- ASIN : B004T4KRU6
- Publisher : Free Press; Reprint edition (October 11, 2011)
- Publication date : October 11, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 13890 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 443 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #342,893 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #80 in Occult Cults & Demonism
- #312 in Coping with Suicide Grief
- #426 in 20th Century World History
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Julia Scheeres is the author of the New York Times bestseller Jesus Land, a memoir about her relationship with her adopted black brother David. The brother and sister grew up in a small Indiana town and, as teens, were sent to a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic together. The book explores the themes of race, fundamentalist religion, and the sustaining bond of sibling love.
Her second book, A Thousand Lives, will be published by Free Press in October 2011.
She lives in Berkeley, California with her husband and two daughters and works at the San Francisco Writers Grotto.
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I greatly enjoyed this book for its even-handedness and its presentation of the facts. Scheeres sets out, openly, to portray the members of Peoples Temple in a sympathetic light. She believes it is a disservice, an insult, to all of them, to simply dismiss them as naive, simple-minded followers of some "crazed" "cult." (She, in fact, deliberately avoids using the word cult unless referencing a quote from some member of the media/government/family member of a victim or survivor. A good choice. It keeps the book grounded.)
This approach does fall flat in some places, though. Scheeres says that the people who joined Peoples Temple were motivated by an admirable idealism, but she fails to really let us understand how it was, other than a most cursory manner (integrated pews, preaching social justice), that Jim Jones gathered these people so readily into his fold. And what I mean by that is that she doesn't spend enough time really setting up Jim Jones for us. The earliest chapters, up until the Temple is not just established but is thriving in California, seem rushed. I got the sense that Scheeres wanted to get to the action - or perhaps wanted to get to the material for which she had more sources, more to go on. I am not sure how many, if any, of the survivors with whom she spoke for this book, were around from the inception of Peoples Temple in Indianapolis. It's hard to get a sense of just what Jim Jones actually understood of socialism, what reading/education had gone into it, and thus, though the word and the notion of "socialism" pops up in the book consistently, it is not really explored.
Okay, all that being said, this is a book worth reading. Through interviews with survivors as well as researching the immense amount of data retrieved by the FBI upon the investigation into the massacre, Scheeres manages to paint an awfully gripping, empathetic portrait of the people in Jonestown. I am in agreement with the gist of some of her final statements, after reading what I have read, that it is a disservice to these people to blame their end on themselves, as many people do. Jim Jones was some strange sort of quasi-religious dictator, and Jonestown, thought it had no barbed wire fences, was most certainly a prison.
All these books I am reading raise a question for which no author seems to have a good answer. I don't know if anyone does. What makes people follow something, and continue follow something, even as it clearly seems to be going wrong? In each of these sects, there are countless moments where followers have a rational voice in their mind saying, "This isn't right." But they choose to go along with it. Whereas Lawrence Wright in Going Clear and Jon Krakauer in Under the Banner of Heaven take what really seems to be an anti-religious/faith stance here, Scheeres avoids that. She presents the facts and leaves you to ponder them.
The author has made excellent use of the extensive files and papers that Jones had compiled on his followers. She has given voice to many People's Temple members who have not been heard before now. The author was perhaps over scrupulous in not using the work cult in this book. I do understand that 'cult' comes with loaded connotations BUT that is what the Peoples Temple was. The many people who fell prey to Jim Jones and died at Jonestown were ultimately re-victimized in their deaths. It is very like the attitude that many rape survivors have encountered - that they "had it coming to them" because of the way they dressed, looked, or acted, or in this case so foolishly joined the People's Temple. I have a great deal of compassion for those who became members and suffered because they believed in Jim Jones. Jones was far more interested in being worshiped, and having control over his followers than he was in social justice. The "good works" he did for his community and his followers were done for HIS benefit not theirs. That is shown all they way back to his first church.
Most importantly this account of Jonestown gives the reader insight into the how and the why people join cults. It gives understanding how very difficult it is to break away from one. I knew people who became members because Jim Jones stood and fought for equality and social justice. I knew people who became members because their family members, or spouse became converts. It is very difficult not to be drawn in when you share a passionate cause, and family or loved ones are involved. (Particularly and tragically so in the case of children.)
That place was a hell hole while I wasn't there, and have lived a rough life of my own, I struggle with anyone could of let things get so fair that this rambling idiot that is Jones.
From the sermons in his churches in California especially I guess people really wanted to believe he was the one.
Lessons learned collectivism is to be avoided like the plague. Jones Town proves this and with collectivism you have socialism.
Free Health care was a Dr reading books as you go.
Collectivism got these people killed and what always fascinated me was the heard mentality. Listening to the tapes one can find on the Internet of Jones and his people one can see how collectivism really works and it's terrifying.
This book really needs to be brought up in college courses when discussing communism, socialism, collectivism. Compare it to countries that actually were communist.
Jones had his own Soviet country on this island and we must teach our young this horrible story and why free speech is important as well as how communism and socialism is BAD.
Colleges of today need to teach this to the ones crying for safe spaces and collectivism.
Every time I listen to the tapes this book revered to (thanks) I am reminded of these college kids of today.
This book is a must read, the lessons to be learned would at least not have these people ,especially the babies die in vain.
Not because socialism, communism, collectivism is good , because it's BAD. Every college student, or teen anger old enough for such topics should read this book and become familiar with Jones Town.
Top reviews from other countries
Anyway, I think I needed to read this story and I picked this book because of the reviews. I feel the need to leave one too. Because I read it in 3 evenings, and because of the feelings it left me with once I put it down. Shock I guess. Sadness mostly. I think those poor people need to be remembered, and I know that they will stay in my mind for ever. It is not just about the horrible ending. The whole thing is absolutely shocking.
Beside of the story in itself, I really enjoyed the book. I found it well written, easy to read (always good for us foreigners), and full of compassion.
I recommend it a thousand times.
Zwischen diesen Fakten versteht es Scheeres auf wunderbare Weise, diese Geschichte wirklich zu erzählen und sie so mit Leben zu erfüllen. Das geschieht völlig unaufdringlich; weder sentimental noch sensationslüstern. Sie schafft es einerseits, dass der Leser wirklich begreift, warum von dieser Kirche so eine Faszination ausging und warum so viele Menschen ihr beitraten. Darüber hinaus gelingt es ihr, das Leben in Jonestwon als das zu schildern, was es war, nämlich nicht die Idylle, über die urplötzlich das Unglück hereinbrach. Man versteht, warum sich fast eintausend Menschen über Jahre terrorisieren und schliesslich zum Selbstmord treiben liessen. Dadurch, dass all das so sachlich geschrieben ist, ohne jegliche Verurteilung, aber auch ohne Verklärung oder Glorifizierung, erhält dieses Werk seine eigentliche Wucht. Das ist journalistische Meisterklasse!
Als besonders vorteilhaft erweist sich der Umstand, dass Scheeres die Geschichte um die Biographien von fünf Mitgliedern des „People’s Temple“ herum aufbaut. Von ihnen kann sich der Leser quasi an die Hand nehmen lassen und durch ihre Geschichte führen lassen. Das verleiht dem Erzählten zusätzlich Authentizität und macht die Schilderung sehr plastisch. Trotz Scheeres’ unaufdringlichen Stils kommt man den Menschen nahe und es kommt zu dem Phänomen, das immer bei der meisterhaften literarischen oder filmischen Verarbeitung von grossen Katastrophen auftritt: man fiebert bis zum Schluss mit und hofft, dass doch nicht das böse Ende kommt, obwohl man genau weiss, wie die Geschichte ausgeht.
Wer Jonestown verstehen will, kommt an diesem Buch nicht vorbei.
Das Buch ist in englischer Sprache geschrieben. Für den, der einigermassen sattelfest in Englisch ist, sollte es recht flüssig und ohne viel Nachschlagen von Wörtern zu lesen sein.
The thing which struck me is all the lies Jones told the outside world about Jonestown are exactly the same lies the former Soviet Union told the outside world about itself. Yet another example how a political philosophy designed to serve the needs of all got hijacked to serve the needs of one.
Tim Reiterman tells us the tragedy of what happened and how. Julia Scheeres tells us the tragedy of why and what it felt like.