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

David Grann

Start date: October 25, 2022

Finish date: November 22, 2022

Why we're reading this: Killers of the Flower Moon is Book and Bites' November selection! This book club will be held in person a…more
[close] Killers of the Flower Moon is Book and Bites' November selection! This book club will be held in person at The Walnut restaurant located at 1417 Walnut St. on Tuesday, 11/22 at 6:30 PM. Visit our website or call 515-283-4152 to register or for more details. Registration is required for this program

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Feb 17, 2022 Courtney rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: family-book-club

Each corpse tells its own story.

4.5 stars. I'm shocked, but not really surprised, that I never learned this history in school. That I had no knowledge of the oil wealth of the Osage or the brutal murders that ravaged the tribe in the first part of the 20th century. Grann has written a compelling history of the Osage Murders and the investigation that led to some form of justice. Broken into three parts: the first, the story of Mollie Burkhart, whose family was all murdered, the second, the story ...more

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Dec 30, 2017 Andy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, recommendations

A story so strange and tragic it can only be true. The best historical nonfiction I’ve read since The Devil in the White City, and the best true crime I’ve read since In Cold Blood. It will leave you angry at the injustices, frustrated by the lack of answers and heartbroken for the Osage tribe. A must read.

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Apr 02, 2018 Merri Monks rated it it was amazing

Shelves: owned-books, 2018-reading-challenge

David Grann's unearthing of the murders of the Osage for their headrights, by their white "guardians" (a racist system that required members of the Osage to have whites in charge of their assets) is a well written and scrupulously researched account of this tragedy that haunts the members of the Osage Nation to this day. Suspicious and unexplained deaths (poisonings), as well as murders by gunshot and even by the bombing of a home--perpetrated by multiple whites (it's more a matter of who didn't David Grann's unearthing of the murders of the Osage for their headrights, by their white "guardians" (a racist system that required members of the Osage to have whites in charge of their assets) is a well written and scrupulously researched account of this tragedy that haunts the members of the Osage Nation to this day. Suspicious and unexplained deaths (poisonings), as well as murders by gunshot and even by the bombing of a home--perpetrated by multiple whites (it's more a matter of who didn't do it than who did do it)--explain the many crimes against the Osage, to steal their oil wealth from them.

Grann accounts both for his own research and the uncovering of history, "even as it slips away," along with the history of the attempts to solve these crimes by the FBI in the 1920s. Invested in creating an image or "myth," of the Bureau, J. Edgar Hoover and his agents in Washington were a far cry from the men who actually solved a small part of the mystery of the murders. A former Texas Ranger, Tom White, and a group of agents under him, were hired to solve the murders. While they successfully imprisoned two of the culprits, many more went undetected at the time, until Grann began to uncover one of the most monstrous crimes in American history. White was an honorable man who genuinely had the interests of the Osage Nation at heart; Grann's book includes the accounting of his eventual appointment as the warden at the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, his kidnapping and near death in a prison break, and his supervision there of two of the men whom he successfully captured and imprisoned who had been among the most--but not the only--murderers of the Osage.

This is an important accounting of a hidden part of the history of the United States--one never told in history classes. This book was the February 2018 choice of Now Read This, the partnership between PBS and the New York Times, which is a book club with a new choice monthly, with discussion on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/NowRe.... ...more

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Dec 22, 2019 CL rated it really liked it

Shelves: race-and-racism, nonfiction, historical, audiobook, crime

The Osage murders were new to me, I’m sorry to say. This is important and interesting history.

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May 23, 2018 Lauren rated it really liked it

Shelves: aammg-book-club

I read this book on the flight to Japan. Thoroughly enjoyed the writing because it was in the style of a mystery to be solved. And it was a part of American history I didn’t know anything about.

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