Jeff Guinn is the bestselling author of numerous books, including GO DOWN TOGETHER, THE LAST GUNFIGHT, MANSON, THE ROAD TO JONESTOWN, WAR ON THE BORDER and WACO. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas, and is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame.
Jeff Guinn has penned the definitive account of the disastrous siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. For the first time in 30 years, more than a dozen former ATF agents who participated in the initial February 28, 1993, raid speak on the record about the poor decisions of their commanders that led to this deadly confrontation. Revelations in this book include why the FBI chose to end the siege with the use of CS gas; how both ATF and FBI officials tried and failed to cover up their agencies’ mistakes; where David Koresh plagiarized his infamous prophecies; and direct links between the Branch Davidian tragedy and the modern militia movement in America. Notorious conspiracist Alex Jones is a part of the Waco story. So much is new, and stunning.
Jeff Guinn, chronicler of the Southwestern US and of American undesirables, tells the riveting story of Pancho Villa’s bloody raid on a small US border town that sparked a violent conflict with the US. The “Punitive Expedition” was launched in retaliation under Pershing’s command and brought together the Army, National Guard and Texas Rangers --- who were little more than organized vigilantes with a profound dislike of Mexicans on both sides of the border. Opposing this motley military brigade was Villa, a guerrilla fighter who commanded an ever-changing force of conscripts in northern Mexico.
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. In THE VAGABONDS, Jeff Guinn shares the story of this pivotal moment 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 THE ROAD TO JONESTOWN, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’ life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America.
Cash McLendon has journeyed to Mountain View in the Arizona Territory with one goal: to convince Gabrielle Tirrito that he’s a changed man and win her back from schoolteacher Joe Saint. As they’re about to depart by stage for their new life in San Francisco, Gabrielle is kidnapped by enforcer Killer Boots, who is working on orders from crooked St. Louis businessman Rupert Douglass. Cash, once married to Douglass’ troubled daughter, fled the city when she died of accidental overdose --- and Douglass vowed he’d track Cash down and make him pay. Now McLendon, accompanied by Joe Saint and Major Mulkins, hits the trail in pursuit of Gabrielle and Killer Boots, hoping to make a trade before it’s too late.
Fleeing to Dodge City, Cash McLendon falls in with an intrepid band of buffalo hunters determined to head south to forbidden Indian Territory in the Texas Panhandle. When a massive migration of buffalo arrives, he thinks his luck has finally changed. Little do Cash and his fellows know that their camp is targeted by a new coalition of the finest warriors among the Comanche, Cheyenne and Kiowa. An enormous force of 2,000 is about to descend on the camp and will mark one of the fiercest, bloodiest battles in frontier history.
When tragedy strikes, all of Cash McLendon’s plans and his entire future dissolve in an instant. With nothing to lose, McLendon attempts to reconcile with an old flame. He heard that she and her father moved their dry-goods store out west, to a mining town named Glorious. There, McLendon tries to win her back, and in the process discovers a new way of life at the edge of the final American frontier. But he can’t outrun his past forever.
After more than 40 years, Charles Manson continues to mystify and fascinate us. One of the most notorious criminals in American history, Manson and members of his mostly female commune killed nine people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate. Now, drawing on new information, bestselling author Jeff Guinn tells the definitive story of how this ordinary delinquent became a murderer.