Chaos By James Gleick

A well written, and eye opening, account of what was going on behind the scenes in the sixties, and no doubt is still going on. An excellent book! Well done Tom O’Neill!

Love the way this book was written. I felt like I was inside Tom’s mind. However, nothing he wrote was surprising at all. Kind of a given.
Great read, recommend everyone read it at least once in their life.

This was a fascinating read. I wouldn’t consider myself a conspiracy theorist at all. I’ve never had much interest in a deeper dive into the Manson murders but the book came as a recommendation. The first 200 pages of the book are a deep dive into the Manson murders and Charles Manson. It was interesting but not spellbinding. The second half delivered more than I was expecting. It’s filled with many interesting connections beyond the Manson murders. I was constantly looking different things up online because I was just shocked that I hadn’t heard much of the information before seeming that is was quite relevant. I think this book has made me into a conspiracy theorist or more accurately, made me question everything. Understanding, as written in the book, the amount of work and research that was done for this book to be written, I think it was written well. I couldn’t put it down once I made it to the real rabbit hole. More people need to read this and start asking questions.

Good read for people who like to know USA history in the 60s up to today’s chaos

Absolutely mind boggling. The content is so interesting that it is hard to put down this book once you start reading it. Grateful that these types of writers still exist in order to deliver such an intricate story. Could not recommend it enough

An enjoyable read with some interesting new information that really makes you think about the official narrative and how accurate it was. However O’neill went off into way too many directions over the years and it seems like at the end, because none of them ultimately gave him some a-ha! type answer, he attempted to tie all 1,000 of them up into this book. Don’t get me wrong, it’s engaging and goes pretty well for about 1/2 of the book, but then starts falling apart, fracturing and then ultimately ends up miles off the road in CIA territory. As soon as the JFK murders were tied in I had to kind of give up. One thing he failed to do which really baffled me, for all his thousands of hours of interviews and research, was to simply go directly to the people involved in the murders and get new interviews from them about all this alternative info he stumbled upon. He did talk to Manson one time, but pretty much blew his ability to get anything out of Manson because he immediately presented himself as what Manson would consider a “snitch” and garden variety reporter looking for a way to sell a new book.

What’s really frustrating is that at some seeming really crucial moments during interviews and where he was about to break through to something really big he appeared to have an uncanny ability at completely just BLOWING the interviews with some rookie journalist mistakes – this was documented over and over and he would plainly admit to his stupidity each time. This was incredibly annoying because it either means he was just too naive and stupid to get what he wanted from the subjects or it’s just him trying to cover his butt. In any case it makes you want to throw the book against a wall.

Ultimately I was left with a feeling of having travelled away from the Bugliosi narrative and asking alot of questions right along with O’neill but then just feeling lost in some aborted thread or into CIA/JFK conspiracy territory, which is what he attempted to use to hint at an ultimate narrative cohesion to explain many of his contradictory and new findings in the cases. About the only thing I am convinced of after the read is that there are almost surely more unsolved Manson murders. If O’neill wants me to believe that Manson was turned into a CIA drone/operative in MKULTRA experiments in creating murder zombies, sorry bud but I can’t go there. For all Manson’s charms we have to realize that sociopathy was his prison education. It is not far fetched at all to think that with a criminally charming personality, seriously damaged and very young influential girls, and drugs at his disposal he was able to create a cult and convince people to kill for him. As for the Helter Skelter theory, every bit of it is absolutely possible especially cosidering that the Family devolved into speed abuse toward the end which would have been the perfect recipe not only for paranoid delusions with a ridiculous basis but as enabling factors for the shocking violence that they engaged in.

I would probably still recommend this read because there is some interesting research and new factoids, but ultimately it totally lacks narrative cohesion and leaves you slightly annoyed with the author for devoting 20 years of his life to a topic and bestowing this as it’s ultimate record.

Wonderful journalistic investigation. Probably the best book I’ve read in a good year. A lot of new info on Manson murders, trial, MK Ultra and other CIA programs. I wish the author would write more, since his 20 year research clearly paid off.