Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco

by Daniel J. Flynn

Overview

The untold story of the intersecting lives of the Reverend Jim Jones and Harvey Milk—marking the 40th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre and Milk's assassination

November 1978. The Reverend Jim Jones, the darling of the San Francisco political establishment, orchestrates the murders and suicides of 918 people at a remote jungle outpost in South America. Days later, Harvey Milk, one of America's first openly gay elected officials—and one of Jim Jones's most vocal supporters—is assassinated in San Francisco's City Hall.

This horrifying sequence of events shocked the world. Almost immediately, the lives and deaths of Jim Jones and Harvey Milk became shrouded in myth. The distortions and omissions have piled up since.

Now, forty years later, this book corrects the record. The product of a decade of research, including extensive archival work and ­dozens of exclusive interviews, Cult City reveals just how confused our understanding has become. In life, Jim Jones enjoyed the support of prominent politicians and Hollywood stars even as he preached atheism and communism from the pulpit; in death, he transforms into a fringe figure, a "fundamentalist Christian," and a "fascist." In life, Harvey Milk outed friends, faked hate crimes, and falsely claimed that the U.S. Navy dishonorably discharged him over his homosexuality; in death, he is honored in an Oscar-winning movie, with a California state holiday, and with a U.S. Navy ship named for him. His assassin, a blue-collar Democrat who often voted with Milk in support of gay issues, is remembered as a right-winger and a homophobe.

But the story extends far beyond Jones and Milk. Author Daniel J. Flynn vividly portrays the strange intersection of mainstream politics and murderous extremism in 1970s San Francisco—the hangover after the high of the Summer of Love. In recounting the fascinating, intersecting lives of Jim Jones and ­Harvey Milk, Cult City tells the story of a great city gone horribly wrong.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610171519
Publisher:	Skyhorse Publishing
Publication date:	10/08/2018
Edition description:	1
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	535,737
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 18 Years

About the Author

Daniel J. Flynn is the author of A Conservative History of the American Left and Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas. A popular radio guest and frequent speaker on college campuses, he writes a weekly column for HumanEvents.com and blogs at www.flynnfiles.com. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two children.

Table of Contents

1 "A Struggle Against Oppression" 1

2 "Ever Westward" 9

3 "I Saw That He Had Powers" 29

4 "Harvey Milk Is a Hot" 43

5 "To Harvey Milk, a Good Friend" 67

8 "I Think They Stole the Election" 79

7 "It Was Very Freaky" 95

8 "A Leopard Never Changes Its Spots" 113

3 "Grass, Gays, and Godlessness" 127

10 "Such Greatness I Have Found at Jim Jones' Peoples' Temple" 143

11 "He Didn't Like Betrayal" 163

12 "Let's Get the Fuck Out of Here" 173

13 "We Committed an Act of Revolutionary Suicide" 185

14 "I Hope Dan White's Got an Alibi" 203

15 "We Do Not Engage in Sanitizing the Facts" 215

Notes 223

Acknowledgements 249

Index 251

Editorial Reviews

"Revisionist history at its delightful best . . . Cult City is a scrupulously researched and sharply written story about the cruel sovereignty of politics in the allocation of glory and disgrace." —Wall Street Journal"Cult City unravels the mythology surrounding the Jonestown massacre and the Harvey Milk–George Moscone assassinations to reveal the shocking truth that rebuts the narrative that stubbornly remains forty years later. That narrative cannot withstand this book. Through scores of interviews and archival research, Daniel J. Flynn, an amazing storyteller blessed with an amazing story, exposes the political corruption and media malfeasance that helped to portray one of the world's great villains as one of San Francisco's great citizens." —Peter Schweizer, bestselling author of Secret Empires

"A bold, at times shocking work of revisionist history that challenges what we think we know about both [Jim Jones and Harvey Milk] and the murderous events that brought them to national prominence."—Rod Dreher, The American Conservative"In this book, very obviously augmented with hours of research and investigation, Daniel presents a horror story more frightening than any contemporary film, and in doing so he brings into focus the real personalities of two men whose names will never be forgotten. One of the many reasons the book is so impressive is Daniel's writing style. . . . This style of prose and reportage magnetizes the reader, now able to learn facts not legend. . . . This is an extraordinary book, copiously annotated and indexed, is a must read for all caring people. The truth is out and we must cope. Highly Recommended." —San Francisco Review of Books"Daniel Flynn blows away some major myths surrounding [Jones and Milk]. . . . For all but the willfully blind, Cult City will an asset of lasting value." —FrontPage Magazine"Many misconceptions surround [the Jonestown massacre], but a new account dispels some common myths. Cult leader Jim Jones is often portrayed as having been a normal fundamentalist Christian preacher. But as Daniel Flynn shows in Cult City, Jones believed 'the Bible is the root of all our problems today,' and he sought to 'infiltrate the church' to spread the communist message." —The Daily Caller"A truly remarkable work detailing San Francisco's descent into multicultural madness in the 1970s." —American Thinker"Flynn tackles not one, but two 20th century American historical figures in Cult City. . . . Cult City is not only an eye-opening exposé on Jones and Milk, but on the politicians and Hollywood elites who allied with them and celebrated their ideals and movements." —The Daily Wire"A compelling history that looks at two pivotal events of the 1970s . . . Extensively researched and well-cited." —The Federalist

"Revisionist history at its delightful best . . . Cult City is a scrupulously researched and sharply written story about the cruel sovereignty of politics in the allocation of glory and disgrace." —Wall Street Journal"Cult City unravels the mythology surrounding the Jonestown massacre and the Harvey Milk–George Moscone assassinations to reveal the shocking truth that rebuts the narrative that stubbornly remains forty years later. That narrative cannot withstand this book. Through scores of interviews and archival research, Daniel J. Flynn, an amazing storyteller blessed with an amazing story, exposes the political corruption and media malfeasance that helped to portray one of the world's great villains as one of San Francisco's great citizens." —Peter Schweizer, bestselling author of Secret Empires

"A bold, at times shocking work of revisionist history that challenges what we think we know about both [Jim Jones and Harvey Milk] and the murderous events that brought them to national prominence."—Rod Dreher, The American Conservative"In this book, very obviously augmented with hours of research and investigation, Daniel presents a horror story more frightening than any contemporary film, and in doing so he brings into focus the real personalities of two men whose names will never be forgotten. One of the many reasons the book is so impressive is Daniel's writing style. . . . This style of prose and reportage magnetizes the reader, now able to learn facts not legend. . . . This is an extraordinary book, copiously annotated and indexed, is a must read for all caring people. The truth is out and we must cope. Highly Recommended." —San Francisco Review of Books"Daniel Flynn blows away some major myths surrounding [Jones and Milk]. . . . For all but the willfully blind, Cult City will an asset of lasting value." —FrontPage Magazine"Many misconceptions surround [the Jonestown massacre], but a new account dispels some common myths. Cult leader Jim Jones is often portrayed as having been a normal fundamentalist Christian preacher. But as Daniel Flynn shows in Cult City, Jones believed 'the Bible is the root of all our problems today,' and he sought to 'infiltrate the church' to spread the communist message." —The Daily Caller"A truly remarkable work detailing San Francisco's descent into multicultural madness in the 1970s." —American Thinker"Flynn tackles not one, but two 20th century American historical figures in Cult City. . . . Cult City is not only an eye-opening exposé on Jones and Milk, but on the politicians and Hollywood elites who allied with them and celebrated their ideals and movements." —The Daily Wire"A compelling history that looks at two pivotal events of the 1970s . . . Extensively researched and well-cited." —The Federalist

From the Publisher