The Untold Story of the Intersecting Lives of Reverend Jim Jones and Harvey Milk - Marking the 40th Anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre and Milk's Assassination
November 1978. Reverend Jim Jones, beloved of San Francisco's political elite, orchestrated the murder-suicide of 918 people at a remote location in the jungles of South America. Days later, Harvey Milk, one of America's first openly gay elected officials and a prominent supporter of Jim Jones, was assassinated in San Francisco City Hall.These horrific events shocked the world. The lives and deaths of Jim Jones and Harvey Milk were soon shrouded in legend. Misrepresentations and omissions have piled up since then.
Now, forty years later, this book gets the facts straight. After a decade of research, including extensive archival work and dozens of exclusive interviews, City of Cults reveals just how confusing our understanding has become.During his lifetime, Jim Jones enjoyed the support of prominent politicians and Hollywood stars even as he preached atheism and communism from the pulpit; After his death, he turned into a marginal figure, a “fundamentalist Christian,” and a “fascist.” During his lifetime, Harvey Milk outed boyfriends, faked hate crimes, and falsely claimed that he had been dishonorably discharged by the United States Navy because of his homosexual tendencies; After his death, he was honored with an Academy Award-winning film, a California state holiday, and the naming of a Navy ship.America in his name. His killer, a working-class Democrat who often voted with Milk in support of gay issues, is remembered as a far-right, anti-gay extremist.
But the story goes far beyond Jones and Milk. Author Daniel J. Flynn brilliantly captures an uncanny portrait of the intersection of mainstream politics and bloody extremism in 1970s San Francisco, a hangover from the euphoria of the Summer of Love. Recounting the intertwined and captivating lives of Jim Jones and Harvey Milk, City of Cults tells the story of a great cityTragically gone awry.
