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quinn_fields's review
5.0
Read this after seeing the movie and really enjoying it. The book unveils even more corruption and cruelty than what’s in the movie. Super sad but really well done. Kept me engaged the whole time because I felt like I was learning an important piece of oklahoma’s history. Even though I knew most of the reveals from the movie, the details in the book really round out the characters and provide important historical context.
carolynrasp's review
informative
sad
medium-paced
3.5
Pretty straightforward telling of the Reign of Terror of the Osage tribe in the 1920s, that also was one of the cases that led to the creation of the FBI. An absolutely horrific thing that happened, and the author didn't embellish much, especially since there is a lot of missing documentation, but he told the story well.
bncarlozzi's review
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.25
The depiction of human venality here will set your hair on fire. The Osage Indians, whose reservation happened to be on a major oil reserve, were in the 1920s set upon by an army of white grifters who murdered them for their wealth. And the entire white institutional infrastructure in and around Osage County, Oklahoma—lawyers, bankers, judges, retailers, housewives et al.—were complicit in the killings. Let there be no doubt: This was one of the myriad forms of genocide visited by the white man on American Indians. Were the Nazis much different in their ultimate intent? Perhaps more systematic but the impetus was the same: expropriate and exterminate. The book is an object lesson in concise storytelling. It contains nothing superfluous. It’s a stunning port-wine reduction of a tale. Grann has learned his lessons well from Truman Capote (In Cold Blood) and Norman Mailer (The Executioner’s Song) and has matched them exquisitely. A superb nonfiction novel. The short, compulsively readable chapters actually give one the sense of hurtling through the narrative. PS: Martin Scorsese's film version has been released by Paramount.
“History is a merciless judge. It lays bare our tragic blunders and foolish missteps and exposes our most intimate secrets, wielding the power of hindsight like an arrogant detective who seems to know the end of the mystery from the outset.”
- David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon
In the 1870s, the United States government drove the Osage nation in herds onto a small reservation in Oklahoma, situated on a relatively small tract which was chosen because its rocky terrain was particularly unsuited to agriculture and thus undesirable to sooners arriving from the East to stake land claims.
Forty years later, after the discovery of vast reserves of oil below this barren land, Osage members were among the country's richest, unaware the only compensation for their tribe losing its land--black gold--would, by 1925, turn fatal for at least eighteen tribal members and three non-members who apparently got too close to the fire.
In 1921, three of the Osage were found murdered, each under mysterious circumstances. By the time the murder toll had reached eighteen members, local law enforcement's investigation was no closer to discovering evidence or identifying any suspect. It has thus become apparent that these law officers feared what would happen if they got closer to solving the crimes or they were beholden to unknown powers interested in the crimes being left unsolved. The Osage hired their own detectives, only to have them bought off to go away or threatened with death.
Many of the murder victims were members of the family of Mollie Burkhart (her mom, sisters and their husbands were all killed). The author David Grann, who has gained a stellar reputation as an investigative writer after penning 2009's The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, centers three intriguing threads around Ms. Burkhart.
In the first segment, he describes Mollie Burkhart's family and details most of the murders. Within this introduction, he introduces significant local figures as well as local law enforcement and its stymied and/or farcical investigations. The obstacles to a serious effort at solving the crimes by state and local officials sets the stage for involvement of the feds.
Upon lobbying by an Oklahoma congressman, the nascent federal law enforcement agency, which ultimately became known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, stepped into the fray. Its director J. Edgar Hoover sent in a rugged former Texas Ranger named Tom White, then nearly forty. Grann's writing intrigues as he follows the gutsy, incorruptible White in his dogged search for the killers and in the trial that followed. Grann's sedulous efforts at research really shine, after spending years poring over FBI files, records and field reports of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, court testimony, diaries and what seems like truckloads of other documents.
In the final section, Grann describes how his own inquisitiveness led to findings of a wider circle of complicity and of further, more nefarious wrongdoing: matters that seeped through the cracks of the investigations, were intentionally neglected, or needed deeper digging and connecting of disparate "coincidences" and circumstances. What Grann found is an appalling betrayal of these Native Americans inherent in the system whereby they had already been forced to take land in exchange for losing their homes and way of life. The American government gave them the Oklahoma land but maintained legal title to the property As Trustee for the Osage on the thought that the Osage were unable to act in their own best interests. This presumption of incompetency led to a sort of cottage industry whereby a white businessman or lawyer would file a petition to be appointed as Guardian for the Indian, which would be granted as a matter of course. To say more would spoil pleasure in reading this mesmeric and infuriating book.
The book convincingly and unsparingly airs a string of crimes against the Osage that reveals a festering thorn in our nation's history: the appalling mistreatment of Native Americans and a malfeasance at the heart of the system established to "protect" them. Killers of the Flower Moon also provides an incisive, balanced report on the inception of the FBI, and the very real need for a federal law enforcement agency for certain crimes that would not be prosecuted due to local criminal influence and racketeering.
“History is a merciless judge. It lays bare our tragic blunders and foolish missteps and exposes our most intimate secrets, wielding the power of hindsight like an arrogant detective who seems to know the end of the mystery from the outset.”
- David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon
In the 1870s, the United States government drove the Osage nation in herds onto a small reservation in Oklahoma, situated on a relatively small tract which was chosen because its rocky terrain was particularly unsuited to agriculture and thus undesirable to sooners arriving from the East to stake land claims.
Forty years later, after the discovery of vast reserves of oil below this barren land, Osage members were among the country's richest, unaware the only compensation for their tribe losing its land--black gold--would, by 1925, turn fatal for at least eighteen tribal members and three non-members who apparently got too close to the fire.
In 1921, three of the Osage were found murdered, each under mysterious circumstances. By the time the murder toll had reached eighteen members, local law enforcement's investigation was no closer to discovering evidence or identifying any suspect. It has thus become apparent that these law officers feared what would happen if they got closer to solving the crimes or they were beholden to unknown powers interested in the crimes being left unsolved. The Osage hired their own detectives, only to have them bought off to go away or threatened with death.
Many of the murder victims were members of the family of Mollie Burkhart (her mom, sisters and their husbands were all killed). The author David Grann, who has gained a stellar reputation as an investigative writer after penning 2009's The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, centers three intriguing threads around Ms. Burkhart.
In the first segment, he describes Mollie Burkhart's family and details most of the murders. Within this introduction, he introduces significant local figures as well as local law enforcement and its stymied and/or farcical investigations. The obstacles to a serious effort at solving the crimes by state and local officials sets the stage for involvement of the feds.
Upon lobbying by an Oklahoma congressman, the nascent federal law enforcement agency, which ultimately became known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, stepped into the fray. Its director J. Edgar Hoover sent in a rugged former Texas Ranger named Tom White, then nearly forty. Grann's writing intrigues as he follows the gutsy, incorruptible White in his dogged search for the killers and in the trial that followed. Grann's sedulous efforts at research really shine, after spending years poring over FBI files, records and field reports of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, court testimony, diaries and what seems like truckloads of other documents.
In the final section, Grann describes how his own inquisitiveness led to findings of a wider circle of complicity and of further, more nefarious wrongdoing: matters that seeped through the cracks of the investigations, were intentionally neglected, or needed deeper digging and connecting of disparate "coincidences" and circumstances. What Grann found is an appalling betrayal of these Native Americans inherent in the system whereby they had already been forced to take land in exchange for losing their homes and way of life. The American government gave them the Oklahoma land but maintained legal title to the property As Trustee for the Osage on the thought that the Osage were unable to act in their own best interests. This presumption of incompetency led to a sort of cottage industry whereby a white businessman or lawyer would file a petition to be appointed as Guardian for the Indian, which would be granted as a matter of course. To say more would spoil pleasure in reading this mesmeric and infuriating book.
The book convincingly and unsparingly airs a string of crimes against the Osage that reveals a festering thorn in our nation's history: the appalling mistreatment of Native Americans and a malfeasance at the heart of the system established to "protect" them. Killers of the Flower Moon also provides an incisive, balanced report on the inception of the FBI, and the very real need for a federal law enforcement agency for certain crimes that would not be prosecuted due to local criminal influence and racketeering.
An important, high caliber read that will make you cringe at the inhumanity of humans and appalled (again) at the treatment of Native Americans
aliasinferno's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
sad
fast-paced
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation, Murder, Racism, and Violence
lizziepat's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
4.25
Genuinely can’t believe this is a work of non-fiction. I am excited to watch the film. Money sucks, man.