Sally Abdalgadir

If you are already familiar with Peoples Temple, the info found here may not be all that surprising, but at the same time, the anecdotes are not any less bizarre or upsetting. There are also lots of photos and documents (such as the threatening letters that were sent to the Mills). That being said, it was repetitive at times, and there were some (what I judged to be) trivial info.

This book is pretty good at chipping away the myths about Columbine (that the media played a big part in perpetuating). Myths that many believe to this day unfortunately. What I learned from this book was that these two boys were typical teenagers with typical teenage lives. They weren't really outcasts who were relentlessly bullied (at times, they were even the bullies).These were boys with serious mental issues. Not only that, but there were a lot of signs that things were going to take a turn for the worse. I took off a star because there were a couple things (that I recognized) that were a little shady. The infamous Marilyn Manson quote that seems to have been taken out of context about what he would have said (it was made to be about the killers when it actually about the survivors and community of Columbine), and the story about Byron Klebold getting kicked out of the house when the Klebolds apparently agreed that Byron would leave (although this information might have not been available until after this book was published). Anyway, this was an interesting read, and I recommend anyone who's even a little bit curious about the Columbine to read it.

It was okay

There were some good stuff in here about what it was like to work for O'Reilly, but some of the other information were not necessarily new (even for a 2012 book). Muto also wrote about the aftermath of the mole incident which I thought was interesting. My biggest issue with this book were the unnecessary tangents, details and personal stories, and I would either skim or skip through them. And there were quite a few of those. A chunk of the information/analysis of Fox News could have been assessed by an outsider, so the book didn't need it. Also, definitely don't judge the book by its cover. Maybe I was being a little naive, but I was expecting more of a behind the scenes look at the characters. We get that for O'Reilly, but for the rest, not so much. There were a couple of pages on Coulter, which didn't reveal anything crazy and a few for Beck and Rivera.

If I were to recommend a book to someone about the whole history of the Peoples Temple and the Jonestown massacre, this would be it. It has everything, from the history of Jim Jones parents to the aftermath of the Jonestown massacre, and it isn't too dense or boring.