Julia Scheeres
Non-Fiction / Biography / Cults/
307 Pages
"Drink the Kool-Aid" is a fairly well known saying. But how many people know where that sentence came from? Jim Jones, a small town preacher begins with a dreams of equality, freedom and happiness; in the end he is the orchestrator of the worlds biggest mass-murder/suicide. Over 900 people died 1/3 of them children, drinking cyanide poisoned kool-aid. These are the story's of the people, who they where, when and where they joined the Peoples Temple and why they chose to fallow the charismatic and crazy Jim Jones half way around the world.
I found this book to be really interesting and would like to read more about Jonestown and the Peoples Temple. The way that this was presented would not have been my first choice however. It was very interesting to hear about each person but it was missing the "big picture" element. I know a little bit about cults from other books and a few documentaries; the reasons why people join, the brainwashing techniques employed by leaders which include malnutrition, lack of sleep, us vs them ideals, and isolating the group from main stream society, to name a few. Any of this information presented hand in hand with how it fit into the world of the Peoples Temple, would have been a huge asset to the story. In my opinion Scheeres also took too much liberty in saying what she hoped people had been feeling, or what she thought they were thinking at such and such a time. While it is hard understand why people followed Jim Jones ,it is a fact that they are not the first of blind faith and they will not be the last. I don't know if I have read of another cult with such a small Elite group (essentially only Jones - who was more than half mad at the time) controlling so many people.
I would recommend
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