Journey to Nowhere: A New World Tragedy

“A tough, intelligent, beautifully written account of how California and Third World illusions fused to set the stage for the Disaster Guyana.” (The Nation) In this book? Shiva Naipaul takes us far beyond the events and surface details surrounding the tragedy of Jonestown and the People’s Temple and gives us his remarkable, unique perspective on the deadly drama of ideas, environments, and unholy alliances that shaped those events both in Guyana and, even more significantly, in America. The book, on one level, is a book about the Third World — a place of incrasing importance in our lives– and, on another, a book about America, about the corrupt and corrupting ideologies and chichi politics of the past twenty years that enabled the Reverend Jim Jones and the People’s Temple to flourish and grow powerful in California and Guyana. ()from the back cover of the 1983 edition, paperback)