Jim found a deep and dark rabbit hole to fall down...

  It has to be one the most confusing rabbit holes anybody has fallen down. How did a man who, in his young days, espoused Marxism and became a champion of the underdog and a supporter of Civil Rights in the USA of the 1960's become the leader of a cult which imploded into the mass suicide of 918 people in 1978?

The answer lay deep inside Jim. Born in poor circumstances in Crete, Indiana in 1931 throughout his childhood there was 'something' about Jim. He hung out with the local kids, but when play ended there was no going to  a friends house for supper, no sleep-overs at friends because Jim had no friends. The other kids were wary of Jim, he would conduct funerals for roadkill animals, sit on his own and read the Bible. Not the sort of kid you invited round.

This rejection gave Jim an empathy with the repressed in America, particularly African-Americans, he understood.

The rabbit hole began to form when, as an avowed communist, he was invited by a Methodist superintendent, to join the church. Jim saw the power the church had over people and, before long, had formed his own ministry to gain followers and further his beliefs. 'Peoples Temple Christian Church Full Gospel' was born.

In the late 1960's Jim became an aggressive pursuer of civil rights, he aided the racial integration of restaurants, businesses, theatres, even a police department.

Jim grew inside, he could chase away the rejections of his childhood by freeing others from rejection.

The  'Peoples Temple' grew and grew, having at it's peak over 5000 members, and so did Jim's need to control it and everyone in it, Jim began to see himself as the 'Peoples Temple' incarnate.

He moved the base of the Temple from state to state, met with such as Walter Mondale and Rosalynn Carter, and received accolades from them. How dangerous this would become.

His early rejections led him not, as you would expect, to enjoy acceptance. Instead, paranoia mixed with his growing Messianic complex led him to reject such approval.

The Peoples Temple, as time passed, became a cult. Jim also rejected the Christian faith he had earlier espoused in favour of his earlier socialism....you can hear him here, full on Jim, the anger, the frustration, the references to his childhood and the growing paranoia, his rejection of the Bible and his own Messianism pour out of him in this audio of a Temple meeting,  Jim Jones preaches...

Eventually Jim moved the Temple to Guyana, where, he determined, the socialist utopia would come to be.

The result, as we know, was disaster.

Jeff Guinn explains how Jim came to find and then fall down a big rabbit hole that confused him as much as it enchanted others and led to the Jonestown endtime in this balanced, meticulously researched and calmly written book.

As usual scribble down the ISBN 9781476763828  and take it to your local bookshop, mine has it in stock;)

Another rabbit hole soon..