Jeff Guinn has 6 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 6 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 53 ratings. The most-rated is Road to Jonestown.
Road to Jonestown
Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of Manson comes the comprehensive, authoritative, and tragic story of preacher Jim Jones, who was responsible for the Jonestown Massacre - the largest murder-suicide in American history. In the 1950s a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the Gospel and Marxism. His congregation was racially integrated, and he was a much-lauded leader in the contemporary civil rights movement. Eventually Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to Northern California. He became involved in electoral politics and soon was a prominent Bay Area leader. In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones' life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost 1,000 of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November 1978 when more than 900 people died - including almost 300 infants and children - after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink. Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones' Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones' orders. The Road to Jonestown is the definitive book about Jim Jones and the events that led to the tragedy at Jonestown.
©2017 Jeff Guinn (P)2017 Simon & Schuster
Go Down Together
Summary
With dramatic flair, Jeff Guinn delivers the definitive portrait of Bonnie and Clyde. These media-savvy outlaws appealed to America's Depression-era hunger for swashbuckling characters. Glowing radio and newspaper reports transformed these "public enemies" into celebrities - much like the cinema gangsters of the time.
©2009 24 Words LLC (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC
The Autobiography of Santa Claus
Summary
Jump on Santa's sleigh for a journey through 17 centuries of Christmas magic! This enchanting holiday treasure combines historical fact with glorious legend as Saint Nicholas himself reveals the definitive story of Santa Claus. From his birth in Lycia to meeting Mrs. Claus and all of his helpers, Santa relates the tale of how he spread his message of generosity and the goodness of giving across the world. Families will delight in every entertaining chapter of this holiday classic, one for each cold December night leading up to Christmas!
©2004 Jeff Guinn (P)2004 Listen & Live Audio, Inc.
Manson
Summary
The New York Times best-selling, authoritative account of the life of Charles Manson, filled with surprising new information: “A riveting, almost Dickensian narrative…four stars” (People). More than 40 years ago Charles Manson and his mostly female commune killed nine people, among them the pregnant actress Sharon Tate. It was the culmination of a criminal career that author Jeff Guinn traces back to Manson’s childhood. Guinn interviewed Manson’s sister and cousin, neither of whom had ever previously cooperated with an author. Childhood friends, cellmates, and even some members of the Manson family have provided new information about Manson’s life. Guinn has made discoveries about the night of the Tate murders, answering unresolved questions, such as why one person near the scene of the crime was spared. Manson puts the killer in the context of the turbulent late 60s, an era of race riots and street protests when authority in all its forms was under siege. Guinn shows us how Manson created and refined his message to fit the times, persuading confused young women (and a few men) that he had the solutions to their problems. At the same time he used them to pursue his long-standing musical ambitions. His frustrated ambitions, combined with his bizarre race-war obsession, would have lethal consequences. Guinn’s book is a “tour de force of a biography…Manson stands as a definitive work: important for students of criminology, human behavior, popular culture, music, psychopathology, and sociopathology…and compulsively readable” (Ann Rule, The New York Times Book Review).
©2013 24Words LLC. All rights reserved. (P)2019 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas
Summary
In How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas, Jeff Guinn combines solid historical fact with glorious legend to deliver another heartwarming holiday book for the whole family. It's 1620 and Mrs. Claus' dear husband is off in the New World planting the seeds of what will become a glorious Christmas tradition. Meanwhile, Mrs. Claus has chosen to stay in England, where the first signs of a dangerous threat to Yuletide cheer are in evidence. The Puritans have gained control of Parliament and appear determined to take all the fun out of Christmas. But Mrs. Claus knows that it's time for serious action when, in 1647, a law is passed by Parliament that actually punishes anyone who celebrates Christmas. Using as its springboard the actual events of a day in 1647 when 10,000 peasants marched through the streets of Canterbury demanding their right to celebrate a beloved holiday, How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas is rich in historical detail, adventure, and plain ol' Christmas fun. Children, parents, and entire families will enjoy this holiday classic!
©2005 Jeff Guinn (P)2005 Listen & Live Audio, Inc.
The Vagabonds
Summary
A “fascinating slice of rarely considered American history” (Booklist) - the story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison - whose annual summer sojourns introduced the road trip to our culture and made the automobile an essential part of modern life. In 1914, Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs visited Thomas Edison in Florida and toured the Everglades. The following year Ford, Edison, and tire-maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds. They would continue their summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on. Although the Vagabonds traveled with an entourage of chefs, butlers, and others, this elite fraternity also had a serious purpose: to examine the conditions of America’s roadways and improve the practicality of automobile travel. Cars were unreliable, and the roads were even worse. But newspaper coverage of these trips was extensive, and as cars and roads improved, the summer trip by automobile soon became a desired element of American life. The Vagabonds is “a portrait of America’s burgeoning love affair with the automobile” (NPR) but it also sheds light on the important relationship between the older Edison and the younger Ford, who once worked for the famous inventor. The road trips made the automobile ubiquitous and magnified Ford’s reputation, even as Edison’s diminished. The automobile would transform the American landscape, the American economy, and the American way of life and Guinn brings this seminal moment in history to vivid life.
©2019 Jeff Guinn (P)2019 Simon & Schuster