The untold story of the intertwined lives of Pastor Jim Jones and Harvey Milk— a significant milestone marking the 40th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre and Milk's assassination, in November 1978.

Pastor Jim Jones, loved by San Francisco's political elite, organized the murders and suicides of 918 people in a remote jungle in South America. A few days later, Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States—and one of Jim Jones's most ardent supporters—was murdered at San Francisco City Hall. This terrifying sequence of events shocked the world.

Almost immediately, the lives and deaths of Jim Jones and Harvey Milk became mythologized. Distortions and omissions have accumulated since then. Now, forty years later, this book rectifies the record. The result of a decade of research, including extensive archival work and dozens of exclusive interviews, Cult City reveals how much our understanding has become distorted.

In his lifetime, Jim Jones enjoyed support from prominent politicians and Hollywood stars, even as he preached atheism and communism from the pulpit. After his death, he transformed into a fringe figure—a "fundamentalist Christian" and "fascist." During his life, Harvey Milk exposed friends, lied about hate crimes, and falsely claimed that the U.S. Navy dismissed him because of his homosexuality. After his death, he was honored in an Oscar-winning film, with a California state holiday in his memory, and with a Navy ship named after him.

The assassin, a middle-class Democratic worker who often voted with Milk on gay issues, is remembered as right-wing and homophobic. But history extends far beyond Jones and Milk. Author Daniel J. Flynn vividly depicts the strange intersection of mainstream politics and fundamentalist extremism in 1970s San Francisco—the headache after the euphoria of the Summer of Love.

Pages: 288, Year of Publication: 1023, Dimensions: 14x14cm