Stories from Jonestown Hardcover – February 1, 2013

I have read every available published book on Jonestown, the Peoples Temple, and Rev. Jim Jones. I found Leigh's book to be refreshing for a change. She had started basically from scratch to understand Jonestown and what really happened. She had put a human face on the people who comprised the Peoples Temple. She had sought to understand what motivated many of them. I admire and respect the author's ability to understand what really happened in November 1978.On November 18, 1978, I was a five year old in New Jersey. On that day, 918 lives were lost in Jonestown, Guyana. The media had created a myth about Rev. Jim Jones and his people. Of course, it was a massacre and it wasn't suicide. People didn't willingly die but were pressured and forced to drink the cyanide. Everybody in the top hierarchy of Jim Jones had a careful plan to execute the unthinkable of murder-suicide.Leigh and her team planned to develop a creative play in displaying the Peoples Temple to the public. Leigh would meet, interview, study, and examine the world of the Peoples Temple. She had survivors like Stephan Jones, Jim and Marceline's only natural son and Tim Carter. In reading their accounts, I began to understand why they are resistant to writing their own stories about Jonestown and the Peoples Temple. Stephan and Tim have a lot of guilt on their shoulders about what happened like a life sentence since 1978.If you want to know about Jonestown, this book adds a level of humanity, compassion, and understanding to those who died and those who lived and remember a time and place long ago. The Peoples Temple provided more than just religious services. If you were poor, homeless, unemployed, hungry, and thirsty, you were fed, given a job, fed, and cared for. The Peoples Temple had counselors to help the members with job placement, training, and even rehab for drugs and alcohol. The Peoples Temple also provided medical services for it's members. There is a reason that the Peoples Temple attracted white liberals and African Americans of all ages.Most of all, the Peoples Temple welcomed all and gave a sense of purpose for living to those who sought meaning like Tim Carter and others. In the end on November 18, 1978, the last person was Annie Moore who wrote "we died because you wouldn't let us live." If only things had been different, I think that's what we have to learn from Jonestown and the Peoples Temple in it's self-destruction. Like Leigh, I'm haunted by what happened in Jonestown to this day.

Before reading, I suggest you take into account the authors background and intentions. She is approaching the subject from the field of drama and the arts, with the intention of producing a play. A field that frequently embellishes, adds fiction and modifies truth for the purposes of dramatic effect. So her opinions and what she adds to the story of Jonestown are, to me, completely without merit. Yet among the many cons, there is one major pro which I think is important enough to justify the book as a whole.The Pro:The first person accounts from family, associates and members, some of whom have never, or rarely, been heard from.The Cons:-The author is obviously unobjective in her own writing and right off the bat there are a few details that seem wrong. The "vote by proxy" comment during the Ryan visit for example. Reiterman writes that it was Jim Jones himself who made the comment yet in this book the author states it was Jack Beam. (Since Reiterman was an eyewitness, he gets the edge.) If this mundane fact is likely misstated, what else did the author fail to verify?-Though there were a few good things going on at the Peoples Temples, the positive aspects seem grossly over-emphasized.-Tim Carter. I don't object to his account being excluded, I think the reader should have been made aware of the despicable acts that he committed in the name of the church. In my opinion his interview should have taken place in a jail cell.-Not really a con, but some of the member accounts should be taken with caution. Even 25 years after the fact, a few survivors still try to justify their own roles in what happened, and gloss over the negative. There seems to be some influence from Jim Jones beyond the grave.In summary, I would strongly recommend reading "Raven" first to get a feel for the facts, THEN picking this book up. The raw testimony is the gem here, the author's "insight" might as well have been left out in my opinion. Good book though and worth reading, just wish it would have been compiled and written objectively........by someone else.

Leigh Fondakowski's scholarship is nothing short of remarkable; this book is simply astonishing reading. The way the story unfolds, in combination with the riveting verbatim interviews and Leigh's elegant, deeply-felt and thought-provoking prose, is simply captivating from start to finish. Moving, sad, even funny at times, the book captures the human condition and all its hopes and struggles through the extraordinary story of the rise and fall of The People's Temple. The book also provides a vital service to posterity, ensuring that the dialogue and future study around the Jonestown tragedy will stay as complex as it should. This is not a simple story with simple lessons; it is as complicated as any I have ever read and enormously impactful because of this depth. The book should be required reading for anyone interested in the topic, or for anyone interested in why people go to such great lengths to live out their most deeply-held beliefs and hopes to change their world. And how charismatic, troubled leaders can lead so many astray with such disastrous consequences. A must read!

Really excellent read if interested in looking into what was a tragic event that happened before I was even born but captured my interest. It looks at allPerspectives and doesn't sugar coat anything quite dark given the subject matter but if interested in this topic worth a read. Definitely need something lighter to red now after such a sad true story.

Having read almost all literature on peoples temple, Jonestown and Jim Jones, and tried to get a comfortable perspective on it and the murder / suicides, this one helped me to gain some closure.

Fantastic value for money. Very quick postage.