This book is available to read until 31st December, 2025
- 200 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
Available until 31 Dec |Learn more
About this book
Eugene Smith lost his mother, wife, and infant son in the mass murder-suicide at Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978. Repatriated by the US authorities on New Year’s Eve, he broke a $50 bill stashed in his shoe to buy breakfast for himself and a fellow survivor.
Returning to California at age twenty-one, Smith faced the daunting challenge of building from scratch a meaningful and self-sufficient life in the American society he thought he had left behind. “My first responsibility as a survivor,” he writes, “was not to embarrass my mother or my wife or my child, and to set an example that can’t be questioned.”
Back to the World: A Life after Jonestown is the story of a double survival: first of the destruction of the idealistic but tragically flawed Peoples Temple community, then of its aftermath.
Having survived, Smith has hard questions for today’s America. “It’s irritating to me that, four decades later, like a broken record, we’re going through all this all over again,” he writes.
Returning to California at age twenty-one, Smith faced the daunting challenge of building from scratch a meaningful and self-sufficient life in the American society he thought he had left behind. “My first responsibility as a survivor,” he writes, “was not to embarrass my mother or my wife or my child, and to set an example that can’t be questioned.”
Back to the World: A Life after Jonestown is the story of a double survival: first of the destruction of the idealistic but tragically flawed Peoples Temple community, then of its aftermath.
Having survived, Smith has hard questions for today’s America. “It’s irritating to me that, four decades later, like a broken record, we’re going through all this all over again,” he writes.
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Yes, you can access Back to the World by Eugene Smith in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Historical Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Foreword
- A Note on Words and Pictures
- Part One: My Road to Jonestown
- Part Two: Surviving Survival
- Part Three: Back to the World
- Appendix: My FBI file