 First edition cover | |
| Author | Julia Scheeres |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | the Jonestown massacre |
| Genre | narrative nonfiction |
| Publisher | Free Press |
Publication date | October 2011, hardcover |
| Pages | 307pp |
| ISBN | 978-1-4165-9639-4 |
A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown (2011) is a history of the Jonestown settlement and massacre in 1978. [1] Written by journalist Julia Scheeres, the book chronicles the lives of five people who resided in Jonestown before the mass murder-suicides that claimed 918 lives.
While researching another book, Julia Scheeres, the author of the memoir Jesus Land , learned that the FBI had recently released 50,000 pages of documents that agents found in Jonestown, everything from shipping manifests to notes to Jim Jones from residents pleading with him to let them go home. It took her a year to read and organize the FBI files, which she acquired under the Freedom of Information Act, and two more years to write the book.
A Thousand Lives focuses on five people: Edith Roller, Stanley Clayton, Hyacinth Thrash and Jim and Tommy Bogue. Together they represent the varied demographics of Peoples Temple, Jim Jones' church. Roller and the Bogues are white, while Clayton and Thrash are African American. The book explores how so many people—black, white, middle class, poor, educated and unschooled—ended up dying in Jonestown. Using diaries and other primary sources as well as hundreds of hours of interviews, Scheeres presents a heart-breaking portrait of belief, survival and loss in this idyllic community.
The book was critically acclaimed and widely reviewed. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that it was "Riveting... unforgettable... heart-breaking... bone-chilling. You will not be able to look away." [2] The Los Angeles Times Book Review wrote, "Scheeres convincingly portrays the members of this community as victims, not fools. It's hard to imagine how people might be so browbeaten, afraid and misled that they would bring about their own deaths—but Scheeres has made that terrifying story believable and human." [1]
The Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, originally Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church and commonly shortened to Peoples Temple, was an American new religious organization which existed between 1954 and 1978 and was affiliated with the Christian Church. Founded by Jim Jones in Indianapolis, Indiana, the Peoples Temple spread a message that combined elements of Christianity with communist and socialist ideology, with an emphasis on racial equality. After Jones moved the group to California in the 1960s and established several locations throughout the state, including its headquarters in San Francisco, the Temple forged ties with many left-wing political figures and claimed to have 20,000 members.
The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name "Jonestown", was a remote settlement in Guyana established by the Peoples Temple, an American cult under the leadership of Jim Jones. Jonestown became internationally infamous when, on November 18, 1978, a total of 918 people died at the settlement, at the nearby airstrip in Port Kaituma, and at a Temple-run building in Georgetown, Guyana's capital city. The name of the settlement became synonymous with the incidents at those locations.
James Warren Jones was an American cult leader and mass murderer who led the Peoples Temple between 1955 and 1978. In what Jones termed "revolutionary suicide", Jones and the members of his inner circle planned and orchestrated a mass murder-suicide in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978. Jones and the events that occurred at Jonestown have had a defining influence on society's perception of cults.
Leo Joseph Ryan Jr. was an American teacher and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the U.S. representative from California's 11th congressional district from 1973 until his assassination during the Jonestown massacre in 1978. Before that, he served in the California State Assembly, representing the state's 27th district.
Mark Lane was an American attorney, New York state legislator, civil rights activist, and Vietnam war-crimes investigator. Sometimes referred to as a gadfly, Lane is best known as a leading researcher, author, and conspiracy theorist on the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy. Lane authored many books, including 10 on the JFK assassination, such as Rush to Judgment,, the 1966 number-one bestselling critique of the Warren Commission and Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK, published in 2011.
Donald Freed is an American playwright, novelist, screenwriter, historian, teacher and activist. According to Freed's friend and colleague, the late Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, "(Freed) is a writer of blazing imagination, courage and insight. His work is a unique and fearless marriage of politics and art."
Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, is a 2006 documentary film made by Firelight Media, produced and directed by Stanley Nelson. The documentary reveals new footage of the incidents surrounding the Peoples Temple and its leader Jim Jones who led over 900 members of his religious group to a settlement in Guyana called Jonestown, where he orchestrated a mass suicide with poisoned Flavor Aid, in November 1978. It is in the form of a narrative with interviews with former Temple members, Jonestown survivors, and people who knew Jones.
Charles R. Garry was an American civil rights attorney who represented a number of high-profile clients in political cases during the 1960s and 1970s, including Huey P. Newton during his 1968 capital murder trial and the Peoples Temple during the 1978 Jonestown tragedy.
Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones is a 1980 American biographical drama television miniseries directed by William A. Graham from a teleplay by Ernest Tidyman, based on the 1978 book Guyana Massacre: The Eyewitness Account by Charles A. Krause. It stars Powers Boothe in the title role, with Ned Beatty, LeVar Burton, Colleen Dewhurst, James Earl Jones, and Randy Quaid in supporting roles. It is a dramatization of the life of murderous cult leader Jim Jones, who led a mass murder of his Peoples Temple followers in Jonestown, Guyana.
Julia Scheeres is a journalist and nonfiction author. Born in Lafayette, Indiana, Scheeres received a bachelor's degree in Spanish from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a master's in journalism from the University of Southern California. Now living and working in San Francisco, California, she has been a contributor to the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Wired News, and LA Weekly. She is a 2006 recipient of the Alex Awards.
Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People details the life and ultimate demise of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. Written by journalist Tim Reiterman, the book reviews the history of the Peoples Temple. The book includes numerous interviews, audio tapes and documents among its hundreds of sources.
Timothy Oliver Stoen is an American attorney best known for his central role as a member of the Peoples Temple, and as an opponent of the group during a multi-year custody battle over his six-year-old son, John. The custody battle triggered a chain of events which led to U.S. Representative Leo Ryan's investigation into the Temple's remote settlement of Jonestown in northern Guyana, which became internationally notorious in 1978 after 918 people – including Stoen's son – died in the settlement and on a nearby airstrip. Stoen continued to work as a deputy district attorney in Mendocino County, California, where he was assigned to the District Attorney's Fort Bragg office. Stoen later joined the Mendocino County Public Defenders. He is now in the private practice of law.
The Peoples Temple, the new religious movement which came to be known for the mass killings at Jonestown, was headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States from the early to mid-1970s until the Temple's move to Guyana in 1977. During this period, the Temple and its founder, Reverend Jim Jones, rose to national prominence thanks to Jones' interest in social and political causes, and wielded a significant amount of influence in San Francisco's city government.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010) is a historical study of the Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. The book was widely acclaimed by critics.
Meg Waite Clayton is an American novelist.
Julia P. Gelardi is an author of European royal history. She is an independent historian.
Christine Sneed is an American author — the novels Little Known Facts (2013), Paris, He Said (2015), and Please Be Advised (2022), and the story collections Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry (2010), The Virginity of Famous Men (2016), and Direct Sunlight (2023) — as well as a graduate-level fiction professor at Northwestern University who also teaches in Regis University's low-residency MFA program. She is the recipient of the Chicago Public Library Foundation's 21st Century Award, the John C. Zacharis First Book Award, the Society of Midland Authors Award, the 2009 AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, and the Chicago Writers' Association Book of the Year Award in both 2011 and 2017.
James Nestor is an author and journalist who has written for Outside, Scientific American, Dwell, National Public Radio, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Men's Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, and others. His 2020 nonfiction book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, was an international bestseller, debuting on the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times bestseller lists and spending 18 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers in its first year of release. Breath won the award for Best General Nonfiction Book of 2020 by the American Society of Journalists and Authors and was a finalist for the Royal Society Science Book Prize. Breath was translated into more than 35 languages in 2022.
The San Francisco Writers Grotto is a writers' coworking space in San Francisco’s SOMA district. Founded in 1993 by writers Po Bronson, Ethan Canin and Ethan Watters, the Writers Grotto is a community of working writers which provides support, feedback, and community to its members. Members have won Pulitzer prizes and Guggenheim Fellowships and penned New York Times bestsellers, national TV series and movies. Notable alumni include ZZ Packer, Roberto Lovato, Mary Roach, and Julia Scheeres. All Writers Grotto members are vetted before acceptance and must have a published book or a significant amount of journalistic or related media work published.
Maria Katsaris was a member of the Peoples Temple cult led by Jim Jones. She is known for being one of the most high-ranking figures in Temple leadership and one of Jim Jones' lovers.