Jeff Guinn looks like a benevolent uncle as he sits in the leather booth of Paris Coffee Shop, a historic diner in his longtime home of Fort Worth. But this masterful historian has chronicled some of the great madmen of the late 20th century: Charles Manson, Jim Jones, and now David Koresh. “I’m not drawn to tragedy,” Guinn said. “I only want to write about events that have a lingering effect.”
His new book, , is one of three new titles that have been published this year about the 51-day standoff at Mount Carmel in spring 1993, resulting in more than 70 deaths. Guinn’s account offers a rare glimpse inside negotiations led by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and like so much of Guinn’s
