For several months after publication of A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres – and after the last edition of the jonestown report – the book continued to receive numerous reviews, and a year later has made its way onto the shelves of many Jonestown libraries.
The author discussed her book on BookTV in late October 2011, about two weeks after publication. The 44-minute presentation appears here.
Ms. Scheeres’ reflections on the last year appear here.
Perhaps the most significant review of the book was “The lure of Jonestown” in the May 30, 2012 issue of The Christian Century, a biweekly publication which describes itself as “A Christian magazine based in Chicago, Illinois [which] nurtures the faith and examines issues of politics, culture, and theology.” An excerpt of that review appears here.
Other reviews included:
Repeating Islands, which describes itself as presenting “News and commentary on Caribbean culture, literature, and the arts” (December 25, 2011)
Failure Magazine (December 8, 2011)
MacLeans, Canada’s leading weekly current affairs magazine (December 7, 2011)
The San Francisco Bay Guardian (December 6, 2011)
WordPress (December 3, 2011)
Publishers Weekly (November 23, 2011)
The American Conservative (November 17, 2011)
Among the online resources listing it as one of the best books of 2011:
In 2014, the British newspaper, The Guardian, listed the book as one of the 10 books about the 1970s:
Ms. Scheeres was also interviewed several times, including:
It’s Time to Stop Saying ‘Drink the Kool-Aid’, by Mark Armstrong, Longreads (22 November 2014)
Untold Stories: Deirdre Sugiuchi interviews Julia Scheeres (1 July 2013)
Talking Writing (13 February 2012)
A short interview with Ms. Scheeres produced by the publishing company for A Thousand Lives appears on YouTube.
Finally, the book has its own page on Wikipedia.