White night

By John Peer Nugent

Book Overview

On November 18, 1978 nearly one thousand American men, women and children died, in a so-called "mass suicide" in a place called Jonestown, Guyana. White Night is the first full account of the true... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0892561165
• ISBN13: 9780892561162
• Release Date: January 1979
• Publisher: Rawson, Wade Publishers
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 1.33 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Don't take this book seriously......

I'm only 30 pages into this book and I'm already noticing some things that don't make sense. The author says something like Jones would calm himself down when he felt stressed out by singing the Beatles' song "Imagine There's No Heaven". There is no Beatles song by that name and the only song that comes close to it, "Imagine" by John Lennon came out in 1979/80 after the Jonestown tragedy. In the fervor to be one of the first books written about JT and the massacre, I think the author may have embellished things here and there. Read it for the historical purpose but don't take what is written as fact. Go with one of the later written books if you want accuracy. Anything by Rebecca Moore is excellent. She lost 2 of her sisters, Annie and Carolyn in Guyana.

Leaves you feeling numbed and mystified!

Rev. Jim Jones should have been stopped along time ago but when he left San Francisco to Guyana was the final straw. Jones was a complex and evil in so many ways as well as sadistic in the treatment of people he professed to love so much. The book here is about the tragedy that occurred in Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978. After 30 years, much has changed in our world. What Jones longed for was ultimate power and destruction and control over his own following. In the end, many didn't go willingly but had no choice since there were armed guards everywhere. Either way, the members were prepared after false drills in the past. You wonder what might have been if he had died since he was already dying anyway. The evil was JOnes himself. The people of Jonestown should be remembered as unwilling victims in the ultimate scam and deception. Of course, both American and Guyanese officials were aware of reports of abuse. He would have children and adults wacked with a wooden board for the sheer pleasure of it. Jones was hypocrite who violated the same laws that his own members were being punished for. He instilled a tremendous amount of fear of world enslavement but he became their unwilling enslaver by taking everything including their children without the consciousness of their decision. Of course, Jones should have been apprehended by armies since he kidnapped children in order to maintain the adults and their parents in line. Even in the end, he ordered the children and babies to go first to drink the cyanide poison. He showed no mercy and his members believed they were worthy of him but he wasn't worthy of anyone. He tortured and terrified them more than any monster could have in the jungles away from the prying eyes and legal ramblings. Jones led 900 others to join in his destruction. The disciplinary actions were far cruel and sadistic than any in modern history. In the jungles of Guyana, he was free to execute and administer horrifying torture which caused not only physical but psychological and emotional scars to those who survived the massacre. Prison can be many things to many people but it is just a state of mind. You can be locked up in prison and still be free to think for yourself without having somebody like Jones tell you what to think and how to live. Maybe it was supposed to happen but it should not have in the first place. Jones is probably one of the most evil men in history along with Stalin and Hitler. Maybe more so because he professed to love the people in the people's temple only to humiliate, embarrass, degrade, and dehumanize them in a concentration camp fashion. He had Stalin's sadism and Hitler's obsession with total dominance in mind control. It was all about mind control, if he couldn't control you then he terrified you to the point of obedience. He believe he was God and that broke the first commandent, "There shall be no other Gods beside Me." In the end of his life, he was both soul-less and cowardly in death. As the

A good book about Jonestown

I've read several books pertaining to Jonestown and this is one of my favorites. I gave 4 instead of 5 stars simply because it lacks photos and illustrations that I find interesting in books. He mentions several important pieces of information that most of the other some 5 or 6 odd books I'd previously read missed. For instances, Marcelines lung cancer, Jones consummate racism, the impregnation of many of his mistresses and abortions ordered by Jones, the amphetamine abuse and Jones secret abberation of the ignorance of his followers to name a few. It is a must read if you are interested in knowing about this fascinating piece of American tragic history.

Before-and-beyond Jonestown info

I liked this book very much. The way I choose to praise it is to write down the text on its front and back flaps. I think it will help the reader to know if this book is what he/she is looking for: "Many Americans believe, or have been led to believe, that the full story of the events surrounding the deaths of nearly one thousand men, women and children in Jonestown, Guyana, in November of 1978 has been made public. "Nothing could be further from the truth. "The real story begins almost twenty years before the terrible, bizarre and almost incredible reports began slowly trickling through, from a forgotten South American country, just before Thanksgiving. The bitter irony is that agencies of the American Government were involved in the creation of a climate for violence: shortly after Guyana achieved independence from Britain, covert American influence was thrown behind what was considered a 'friendly'(i.e. non-Communist) opposition party in order to unseat a duly elected 'unfriendly' government. From that moment, seemingly randon events and personalities moved to a climax with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. "From his obscure origins in a small Indiana town, Jim Jones emerged as an apparent champion of the forgotten and unwanted in America - the old, the poor, the blacks and other minorities, dropouts from affluence and conventional religion. Over a fifteen-year period, Jones fashioned an exotic religion and became its living god. How his personality was distorted by his growing messianic claims combined with scraps of radical and socialist rhetoric, how he came to believe that he was beyond good and evil is a chilling but fascinating account of the dangers inherent in the desperate search for charismatic leaders in this rush hour of strange gods. "From Indiana, to northern California, to San Francisco to the remote back-country of Guyana, Jones left a trail of increasingly unholy rituals and commandments. He was aided and abbeted by a following of blacks, who willingly gave him all of what little wealth and property they had, and largely upper-middle-class whites who were often veterans of radical movements of the '60's. Together, they formed the 'inner circle'and expertly used both political clout and techniques of terrorization and propaganda equal to those of any totalitarian state - except that it all went on in the midst of a democratic society, shielded by the very protection forged by that society for freedom of speech and worship. "Only in Guyana would the full, ripe madness of his methods and beliefs become fully evident. For the 'Reverend' Jones had struck an intricate bargain with the leaders of his host country - the members of the People's Temple were hostages. Relatives and friends, refugees from Jones's movement, and, too late, one American Congressman, tried to warn the American government and people. Incredibly, the American State Department had more than ample evidence - for months - that Jonestown was a tragedy waiting

Solid Jonestown info

The book is well-researched. The author talked to many former People Temple members.There were a few boring parts pertaining to the Sociopolitical history of Guyana. It didn't interest me that much.From the descriptions in the book, I did get a better feel for the country however which I enjoyed. In reading this book, remember that it came out in 1979 -many things were nor revealed till some years later.My favorite part of the book was the information about Maria Katsaris-one of Jim Jones 2 young long time Mistresses who died at Jonestown.I have always found her fascinating.