
Back to the World
A Life after Jonestown
Eugene Smith(Author)
Texas Christian University Press
Will be published approx. on 30. April 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
200 pages
978-0-87565-778-3 (ISBN)
Description
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.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Fort Worth
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
15 black & white images
Dimensions
Height: 226 mm
Width: 150 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
340 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-87565-778-3 (9780875657783)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Eugene Smith was born in 1957 in Detroit, Michigan, and grew up in Fresno, California. He was working in Georgetown, Guyana, for Peoples Temple on November 18, 1978, the day of the tragedy in Jonestown. He retired in 2015 after twenty-two years' service with the California Department of Transportation. He lives in the Bay Area.