John R. Hall

John Ross Hall (born 1946) is an American sociologist of religion, author, and research professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis. He received a PhD from the University of Washington in 1975. He was previously an associate professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Hall has authored and edited several books on religion and sociology; he is most well known for his studies of the Jonestown mass suicide, including his 1987 book, Gone from the Promised Land.

Other books written by Hall include Apocalypse Observed (2000), Sociology On Culture (2003) and Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity (2009). He also edited several books, including Paul Pascon's 1986 book Capitalism and Agriculture in the Haouz of Marrakesh and Reworking Class (1997).

Early life and education John Ross Hall was born in 1946. He is from Louisville, Kentucky, and attended Atherton High School; in his youth, he played in a rock band called The Falcons. He was raised in a Presbyterian family. He attended Yale College, studying sociology, and graduated from that institution with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1968.

Career From 1976, he was an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Missouri-Columbia; he became an associate professor in 1982. He left that institution in 1989.

Works Hall has authored several books. developing from Hall's interest in the counterculture communities of the time. In the book, he interprets the events of the mass suicide and attempts to connect Jonestown to American society at large. It was published in 1987 by Transaction Books. The book took him five years to research. After publishing the book, Hall donated his collection of supporting research materials to the California Historical Society, where it formed the John R. Hall Research Materials collection. He has since written several other articles and book chapters on Jonestown. Writing in 2006, scholar Rebecca Moore wrote that Gone from the Promised Land "provides the most accurate, complete, and factual discussion of Peoples Temple of any account in print". and Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity. He co-authored Apocalypse Observed, a 2000 volume on apocalyptic religious groups, including Jonestown, with Philip D. Schuyler and Sylvaine Trinh. Hall primarily authored it with the co-authors assisting on two chapters. He coauthored Sociology On Culture with Mary Jo Neitz and Marshall Battani in 2003. Hall also edited several books. He edited Paul Pascon's 1986 book Capitalism and Agriculture in the Haouz of Marrakesh, also authoring the introduction. In 1997, he edited Reworking Class, a collection of essays on sociological class analysis.