Reviews with content warning for Murder - Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

The movie starring Lily Gladstone brought me here, so I already have a basic knowledge of the events during the Reign of Terror. That said, it’s a completely different experience to read and absorb all the details about the case. As a more reflective person I suppose it’s one of the reasons why I almost always prefer the book to a more visual experience with tv or movie adaptations. There are many details the movie either glossed over or omitted completely, such as the extent of the exploitation that went on in disguise of the so called guardianship scheme, or the grand scale of systematic killings of native people. It’s infuriating to read.

A quote from the grandson of one of the likely victims summarises this generational trauma in its essence,

"they ripped out too many pages of our history[…] A murdered Indian's survivors don't have the right to the satisfaction of justice for past crimes, or of even knowing who killed their children, their mothers or fathers, brothers or sisters, their grandparents. They can only guess—like I was forced to."

I’ve always enjoyed investigation journalism books. This is especially a brilliant and educational one. A must read.

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mabechel's review against another edition

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dark informative mysterious sad tense slow-paced

3.25

It's an important part of history that I enjoyed learning. I mostly docked stars because the pacing was unnecessarily nonlinear in some parts, which made it more difficult to follow.

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sixtimes's review against another edition

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dark informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

Incredibly informative and powerful. The author was able to make his technical writing concise in a way that made it easier for me to understand than many nonfiction books I have tried to read.

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river23's review against another edition

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dark sad tense medium-paced

3.25

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kcup_espresso's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

3.5

I definitely wanted to like this book more than I did. I think this story is an important one, showing just a piece of the history in which white Americans brutalized and murdered what is suspected to be hundreds of Osage people. The beginning really had me hooked, being from Mollie’s POV. But once the POV shifted away from Mollie I had a harder time focusing. I didn’t think the parts that discussed the history of the FBI were as cohesive as I would have liked, I’m not sure. I did enjoy the last third of the book of the author talking to us directly about his research. My opinion of the narrative style of each section could possibly be swayed by the different audiobook narrators as well; I loved the first narrator but didn’t love the main narrator for part two. Overall I’m still glad I read the book and learned a lot.

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lindsdavis's review against another edition

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dark informative mysterious sad fast-paced

5.0

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burnourhistory's review against another edition

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informative sad medium-paced

3.5

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