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bestselling, authoritative account of the life of Charles Manson, filled with amazing new information and previously unpublished photographs: “A riveting, almost Dickensian narrative…four stars” (People).

More than forty years back Charles Manson and his mostly feminine commune killed nine people, among them the pregnant actress Sharon Tate. It had been the culmination of the criminal profession that author Jeff Guinn traces back again to Manson’s years as a child. Guinn interviewed Manson’s sister about Manson: THE LIFE SPAN and Situations of Charles Manson and cousin, neither of whom acquired ever previously cooperated with an author. Childhood friends, cellmates, as well as some members from the Manson family have provided brand-new information regarding Manson’s existence. Guinn has made discoveries about the night time of the Tate murders, answering unresolved questions, such as why one person near the scene of the crime was spared.

Manson places the killer in the context of the turbulent later sixties, an era of race riots and road protests when power in all its forms was under siege. Guinn displays us how Manson produced and processed his message to match the times, persuading confused young females (and some males) that he had the answers to their problems. At exactly the same time he used these to pursue his long-standing musical ambitions. His disappointed ambitions, combined with his bizarre race-war obsession, would have lethal implications.

Guinn’s publication is a “tour de force of a biography…Manson stands like a definitive function: very important to college students of criminology, individual behavior, well-known culture, music, psychopathology, and sociopathology…and compulsively readable” (Ann Guideline, The New York Times Reserve Review).