Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson

The New York Times bestselling, authoritative account of the life  of Charles Manson, filled with surprising new information and  previously unpublished photographs: “A riveting, almost Dickensian  narrative…four stars” (People).

More than forty 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 sixties, 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).