2018 Edgar Award Finalist—Best Fact Crime “A thoroughly readable, thoroughly chilling account of a brilliant con man and his all-too vulnerable prey” (The Boston Globe)—the definitive story of preacher Jim Jones, who was responsible for the Jonestown Massacre, the largest murder-suicide in American history, by the New York Times bestselling author of Manson. In the 1950s, a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the gospel and Marxism. His congregation was racially mixed, and he was a leader in the early civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California, where he got involved in electoral politics and became a prominent Bay Area leader. But underneath the surface lurked a terrible darkness. In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his early days as an idealistic minister to a secret life of extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing, before the fateful decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died—including almost three hundred infants and children—after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink. Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. The Road to Jonestown is “the most complete picture to date of this tragic saga, and of the man who engineered it…The result is a disturbing portrait of evil—and a compassionate memorial to those taken in by Jones’s malign charisma” (San Francisco Chronicle).

The Road to Jonestown

“Impressively researched and written with storytelling verve” (The Wall Street Journal), this is the definitive account of the disastrous siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, featuring never-before-seen documents, photographs, and interviews, from former investigative reporter Jeff Guinn, bestselling author of Manson and The Road to Jonestown. For the first time in thirty years, more than a dozen former ATF agents who participated in the initial February 28, 1993, Waco raid speak on the record about the poor decisions of their commanders that led to this deadly confrontation. The revelations in this book include why the FBI chose to end the siege with the use of CS gas; how both ATF and FBI officials tried and failed to cover up their agencies’ mistakes; where David Koresh plagiarized his infamous prophecies; and direct links between the Branch Davidian tragedy and the modern militia movement in America. Notorious conspiracist Alex Jones is a part of the Waco story. So much is new and stunning. Guinn puts you alongside the ATF agents as they embarked on the disastrous initial assault, unaware that the Davidians knew they were coming and were armed and prepared to resist. His you-are-there narrative continues to the final assault and its momentous consequences. Drawing on this new information, including several eyewitness accounts, Guinn again does what he did with his bestselling books about Charles Manson and Jim Jones, revealing “gripping” (Houston Chronicle) new details about a story that we thought we knew.

Waco

The New York Times bestselling, authoritative account of the life of Charles Manson, filled with surprising new information and previously unpublished photographs: “A riveting, almost Dickensian narrative…four stars” (People). More than forty years ago Charles Manson and his mostly female commune killed nine people, among them the pregnant actress Sharon Tate. It was the culmination of a criminal career that author Jeff Guinn traces back to Manson’s childhood. Guinn interviewed Manson’s sister and cousin, neither of whom had ever previously cooperated with an author. Childhood friends, cellmates, and even some members of the Manson family have provided new information about Manson’s life. Guinn has made discoveries about the night of the Tate murders, answering unresolved questions, such as why one person near the scene of the crime was spared. Manson puts the killer in the context of the turbulent late sixties, an era of race riots and street protests when authority in all its forms was under siege. Guinn shows us how Manson created and refined his message to fit the times, persuading confused young women (and a few men) that he had the solutions to their problems. At the same time he used them to pursue his long-standing musical ambitions. His frustrated ambitions, combined with his bizarre race-war obsession, would have lethal consequences. Guinn’s book is a “tour de force of a biography…Manson stands as a definitive work: important for students of criminology, human behavior, popular culture, music, psychopathology, and sociopathology…and compulsively readable” (Ann Rule, The New York Times Book Review).

Manson

An “engagingly written” (The Wall Street Journal) account of the “Punitive Expedition” of 1916 that brought Pancho Villa and Gen. John J. Pershing into conflict, and whose reverberations continue in the Southwestern US to this day. Jeff Guinn, chronicler of the Southwestern US and of American undesirables (Bonnie and Clyde, Charles Manson, and Jim Jones) tells the “riveting and supremely entertaining narrative” (S.C. Gwynne, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of the Summer Moon) of Pancho Villa’s bloody raid on a small US border town that sparked a violent conflict with the US. The “Punitive Expedition” was launched in retaliation under Pershing’s command and brought together the Army, National Guard, and the Texas Rangers—who were little more than organized vigilantes with a profound dislike of Mexicans on both sides of the border. Opposing this motley military brigade was Villa, a guerrilla fighter who commanded an ever-changing force of conscripts in northern Mexico. The American expedition was the last action by the legendary African American “Buffalo Soldiers.” It was also the first time the Army used automobiles and trucks, which were of limited value in Mexico, a country with no paved roads or gas stations. Curtiss Jenny airplanes did reconnaissance, another first. One era of warfare was coming to a close as another was beginning. But despite some bloody encounters, the Punitive Expedition eventually withdrew without capturing Villa. Today Anglos and Latinos in Columbus, New Mexico, where Villa’s raid took place, commemorate those events, but with differing emotions. And although the bloodshed has ended, the US-Mexico border remains as vexed and volatile an issue as ever.

War on the Border

A “fascinating slice of rarely considered American history” (Booklist)—the story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison—whose annual summer sojourns introduced the road trip to our culture and made the automobile an essential part of modern life. In 1914 Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs visited Thomas Edison in Florida and toured the Everglades. The following year Ford, Edison, and tire maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds. They would continue their summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on. Although the Vagabonds traveled with an entourage of chefs, butlers, and others, this elite fraternity also had a serious purpose: to examine the conditions of America’s roadways and improve the practicality of automobile travel. Cars were unreliable and the roads were even worse. But newspaper coverage of these trips was extensive, and as cars and roads improved, the summer trip by automobile soon became a desired element of American life. The Vagabonds is “a portrait of America’s burgeoning love affair with the automobile” (NPR) but it also sheds light on the important relationship between the older Edison and the younger Ford, who once worked for the famous inventor. The road trips made the automobile ubiquitous and magnified Ford’s reputation, even as Edison’s diminished. The automobile would transform the American landscape, the American economy, and the American way of life and Guinn brings this seminal moment in history to vivid life.

The Vagabonds

Più di 40 anni fa, Charles Manson e la sua comune, composta perlopiù da donne, uccisero nove persone, tra cui l’attrice incinta Sharon Tate. Jeff Guinn, autore del libro, fa risalire la carriera criminale di Manson all’infanzia di quest’ultimo. Guinn ha intervistato la sorella e la cugina di Manson, che mai avevano collaborato con un autore prima. Amici d’infanzia, compagni di cella e persino alcuni membri della Famiglia hanno contribuito a fornire nuove informazioni. Guinn ha fatto nuove scoperte sulla notte degli omicidi Tate, rispondendo a domande irrisolte, come il motivo per cui una persona vicina alla scena del crimine fu risparmiata. Il libro colloca l’assassino nel contesto della turbolenta fine degli anni ’60, un’epoca di rivolte razziali e proteste di piazza in cui l’autorità in tutte le sue forme era sotto assedio. Guinn ci mostra come Manson abbia creato e perfezionato il suo messaggio per adattarlo ai tempi, convincendo giovani donne confuse (e qualche uomo) di avere le soluzioni ai loro problemi. Allo stesso tempo, usava i suoi seguaci per realizzare le sue ambizioni musicali di lunga data che, frustrate, unite alla sua bizzarra ossessione per la guerra razziale, avrebbero avuto conseguenze fatali.

La vita e i tempi di Charles Manson

La strada verso Jonestown è il libro definitivo su Jim Jones e sugli eventi che hanno portato alla tragedia di Jonestown. Negli anni Cinquanta, un giovane ministro di Indianapolis di nome Jim Jones predicava una curiosa miscela di Vangelo e marxismo. La sua congregazione era integrata dal punto di vista razziale e lui era un leader molto apprezzato nel movimento per i diritti civili. A un certo punto, Jones trasferì la sua chiesa, il Tempio del popolo, nel nord della California. Si impegnò nella politica elettorale e presto divenne un leader di spicco della Bay Area. In questa avvincente narrazione, Jeff Guinn esamina la vita di Jones, dalle sue relazioni extraconiugali, all'uso di droghe e ai modi in cui esercitava finte guarigioni ispirate dalla fede, fino alla difficile decisione di trasferire quasi mille dei suoi seguaci in un insediamento nella giungla della Guyana, in Sud America. Guinn fornisce nuovi sorprendenti dettagli sugli eventi che portarono al giorno fatale del novembre 1978, quando più di novecento persone morirono – tra cui quasi trecento neonati e bambini – dopo aver ricevuto l'ordine di ingerire una bevanda al cianuro. Guinn ha analizzato migliaia di pagine di fascicoli dell'FBI sul caso, compreso il materiale reso disponibile nel corso della sua ricerca. Si è recato nella città natale di Jones, nell'Indiana, dove ha parlato con persone mai intervistate prima e ha scoperto nuove informazioni dai sopravvissuti. Ha persino visitato il sito di Jonestown con lo stesso pilota che vi volò il giorno in cui il deputato Leo Ryan fu assassinato per ordine di Jones.

La strada verso Jonestown

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