The_c.o.w.s.

The Katherine Massey Book Club @ The C.O.W.S. hosts the premier study session on Michael Meiers Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment? Gus selected this book in spite of numerous book club listeners announcing their hopes that we read a book on this 1970's cult. This infamous mass murder has countless parallels to our recent literary selections - Columbine, Michael Swango, and The Hart murder-suicide. The Rev. Jim Jones, a White man born in Indiana, took a thousand people from California to Guyana, South America. On November 18th, 1978, Jones killed nearly all 1,000 of his mostly black followers and Congressman Leo Ryan. A few dozen were shot, but most were poisoned with cyanide, just like "Double-0 Swango." For nearly half a century, this event has been conventionally understood as a bunch of brainwashed loons following a White charlatan to their demise in the jungle. Meiers work suggests something far more nefarious. The historical context of when Jonestown occurred is extremely important to processing the