Death in the Jungle

Winner of the 2025 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction!

How did Jim Jones, the leader of Peoples Temple, convince more than 900 of his followers to commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced punch? From a master of narrative nonfiction comes a chilling chronicle of one of the most notorious cults in American history.

How did Jim Jones, the leader of Peoples Temple, convince more than 900 of his followers to commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced punch? From a master of narrative nonfiction comes a chilling chronicle of one of the most notorious cults in American history.

A YALSA EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION WINNER . A SCBWI GOLDEN KITE AWARD FINALIST . ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR- Publishers Weekly, BookPage, Horn Book, Booklist, The Bulletin of The Center for Children's Books, School Library Journal

Using riveting first-person accounts, award-winning author Candace Fleming reveals the makings of a monster- from Jones's humble origins as a child of the Depression... to his founding of a group whose idealistic promises of equality and justice attracted thousands of followers... to his relocation of Temple headquarters from California to an unsettled territory in Guyana, South America, which he dubbed "Jonestown"... to his transformation of Peoples Temple into a nefarious experiment in mind-control.

And Fleming heart-stoppingly depicts Jones's final act, persuading his followers to swallow fatal doses of cyanide-to "drink the kool-aid," as it became known-as a test of their ultimate devotion.

Here is a sweeping story that traces, step by step, the ways in which one man slowly indoctrinated, then murdered, 900 innocent, well- meaning people. And how a few members, Jones' own son included, stood up to him... but not before it was too late.