<b>2018 Edgar Award Finalist--Best Fact Crime</b> <p/><b>"A thoroughly readable, thoroughly chilling account of a brilliant con man and his all-too vulnerable prey" (<i>The Boston Globe</i>)--the definitive story of preacher Jim Jones, who was responsible for the Jonestown Massacre, the largest murder-suicide in American history, by the <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>Manson</i>.</b> <p/>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. <p/> 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. <p/> Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the cou