Reviews tagging 'Colonisation'

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

94 reviews

meagan123's review against another edition

dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Racism, Murder, and Alcohol

Moderate: Genocide, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, and Classism

j0guelas's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

Patrick Wolfe was right when he said settler colonialism is a structure not an event.

I picked up the book straight after watching the movie and I can definitely say I enjoy the book more, which is not a slight to Martin Scorsese. My reading experience was greatly influenced by the movie as well - making comparison to how the story and its characters were portrayed.

David Grann is a true journalist. He wastes no time in telling the truth and laying bare how sinister white society can be in a style that is so beautiful.

While it’s true the shift to the FBI does not compare to Mollie Burkhart’s story, I was quite captured by Tom White. Though Mollie, like the film, no doubt is the beating heart of this story, White’s story was enrapturing. Following White’s story from his youth to his days as a cowboy lawman to when he becomes the FBI’s crowning jewel before slowly being lost to time was poetic.

And much like the film, I have a lot of complex feeling about this book that I struggle to articulate. Every time I come up with a thought about this book, I find myself countering it. Was I acutely aware that the person telling this story is a non-Osage person? Yes. But I was also acutely aware that I am not an Osage person. What layers of this truth is Grann missing? What am I missing?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Racial slurs, Racism, Suicide, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Murder, and Colonisation

mlweih's review against another edition

dark informative sad slow-paced

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Hate crime, Racial slurs, Racism, Murder, and Colonisation

omair's review against another edition

dark informative sad medium-paced

4.0

WARNING TO THOSE READING THIS BECAUSE OF THE FILM ADAPTATION:
After all of the hype and excitement I had for the film adaptation, I knew I had to read the source material as soon as possible. I had thought I would take to the book far more than the film, which I did thoroughly like, because I went into the film expecting more police procedural and less story of love

and betrayal

.

Yet as I read this book, I found myself agreeing more and more with the decisions the film made. This is not a slight against the book, but further praise for the film. The purposes of the film and the book are not one and the same, and so it is vital to anyone that, like me, is coming to read because/after the film to understand before they begin.

REVIEW THE BOOK INDEPENDENT OF THE FILM (which is what I intend to do)

Killers is as informative of a book as I could've imagined considering the personal story the primary focus is on. The book is overflowing with descriptors that will make you feel sorrow and anger, leave you wondering what humanity is and why it is missing. While only covering a handful of incidences, the cold factual presentation will leave you reeling, as if sensing how small a fraction the sample is compared to the population. All totaled, the official death count may

only be a couple dozen

but Grann will easily convince you that there were hundreds more victims during the Reign of Terror, and he may well be right.

If you can make it through the pain and sadness, there is a beautiful story here of a people's survival. The heart to endure and rally is as much a light as the era is an inky darkness. The book may focus on Thomas White, his team of agents, and their investigation that finally tore down the veil behind which the atrocities hid, but the real heroes are the Osage people.

For as strong as the book is in its cold, clearly well-researched, tone, I also found this to be a slight undoing. The voice can feel rather impersonal at times, leaving the reader as a student of history rather than immersed in the moment. This is why I agree with the decisions made for the film adaptation. Maybe I would feel differently not having known the details from the film first, I can never know for sure. But the progression of the book, and some of the detours along the way, played loose with risking a reader to set the book down only to never return and finish.

Ultimately, I will recommend this read to anyone with an interest in the Reign of Terror, interest in the era, an interest in the realities of White American Exceptionalism, or a morbid curiosity of a casual genocide. Sticking through some of the uneven pacing is well worth it for the resulting reverence of the Osage, and Mollie in particular, all carrying inside of them something no man could ever kill.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Racism, Violence, Grief, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Chronic illness, Confinement, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Toxic relationship, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, Cultural appropriation, Toxic friendship, Colonisation, and Classism

Minor: Addiction, Animal death, Child death, Domestic abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Medical content, Kidnapping, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Cultural appropriation, and Gaslighting

twistykris's review against another edition

dark informative mysterious sad medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Racial slurs, Racism, Grief, Murder, Colonisation, and Classism

Moderate: Child death, Fire/Fire injury, and Alcohol

beetree's review against another edition

challenging dark informative mysterious sad tense medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, Racism, Mass/school shootings, Death of parent, Murder, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Alcoholism, Confinement, and Colonisation

Minor: Child death and Antisemitism

kathmulderry's review against another edition

informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

Oh geez. Shocking, not that these evil has existed, but the depths of the evil. Grann tells the story with no holds barred. I appreciate his detail and storytelling and clear care and sorrow for the Osage people. The Reign of Terror is an important piece of American history, and I would recommend this to anyone curious about understanding what the Osage have been put through. If you struggle with non-fiction this also doesn’t have that textbook-y read to it, without watering down the info. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Hate crime, Violence, Grief, Murder, and Colonisation

rachelann88's review

informative mysterious sad medium-paced

4.0

Great historical investigation. I think the narration of the audiobook kept me hooked/helped with pacing but Grann does a great job of bringing the past into great detail. Events are well-laid out and the way he mentions the various people involved make them memorable and easy to track throughout the book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, and Murder

Moderate: Colonisation

blaketisdebest's review against another edition

dark emotional informative mysterious tense medium-paced

5.0

Truly one of the best books I’ve ever read. Chronicles the grotesque history of abuse and extortion of the indigenous in the americas as a legacy that continues today. The author approaches the nonfiction tale as a narrative beyond reality by how shocking and inane the story of the Osage truly is.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcoholism, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Infidelity, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail

dontwritedown's review against another edition

dark informative sad tense fast-paced

5.0

I wished I had read this before I saw the film opening weekend.

Being Native and being in Indigenous spaces, this case was familiar to me, though I didn't know the full story.

While I, like many others, would have liked an Osage to tell this story, I do not have an much of a problem with Grann telling the stories. Because Grann is a journalist and stuck to the facts and acknowledged not only in the acknowledgments who he was getting these stories from throughout the book. It is refreshing to hear someone not from our community accurately portray the prejudices Natives face in the court system. He asked "would any white man at the time convict another white man for killing an Indian?" 

I highly recommend, especially if you are Indigenous and had to walk out of the movie due to the gore.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Racial slurs, Rape, Violence, Blood, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Alcohol, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail