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SEDUCTIVE POISON

A JONESTOWN SURVIVOR'S STORY OF LIFE AND DEATH IN THE PEOPLES TEMPLE

A chilling account of one woman’s seven years in the Peoples Temple, culminating in the mass suicide just months after she escaped from the dystopian community of Jonestown. Layton was attracted to Jim Jones’s religious movement, as many were, for its radical teachings on interracialism and social justice. She joined in Berkeley at the tender age of 18, along with her mother (a Jew who had escaped Nazi Germany) and brother Larry. Layton quickly came to be a favorite of Jones’s. As a member of his inner circle, she saw a few things (such as his voracious sexual appetite) that made her secretly question him, though she remained faithful to his socialist vision. But in December 1977, when Layton and her mother traveled to the movement’s new headquarters in Jonestown, Guyana, they discovered appalling conditions, near-starvation, and physical abuse; Jonestown residents endured a living hell that more closely resembled an armed labor camp than a communal tropical paradise. Layton exploited Jones’s trust by fleeing to the American Embassy during a public relations trip to Georgetown, the Guyanese capital. She was granted asylum in May 1978, and within weeks, she was speaking openly in the US about her experiences in the cult—including the mass-suicide practice drills that Jones put them through. It was Layton’s reports that inspired Congressman Leo Ryan to undertake his own investigative trip to Guyana. Ryan and several press members were assassinated, and Jones then made good his plans for mass suicide. More than 900 perished. Layton’s brother is still serving a prison sentence for his role in the attack on Ryan’s party. Her mother died of cancer just days before the tragedy (though she died without pain medication, which Jones had confiscated for his own —needs—). Truly unforgettable. (32 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour; television satellite tour)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-385-48983-8

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Anchor

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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