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Cathryn_Conroy
A History Book That Is Also a Page-Turner and Will Keep You Reading Long Past Your Bedtime
This is a history book. I had to keep reminding myself of that because it reads like a mystery novel. But it's all true. All factual. And that makes it all the more horrifying.
Written by David Grann, this is the story of the brutal murders of hundreds of people, many in the same family, in the Osage Tribe of Native Americans living on land in Oklahoma in the 1920s. It is called the Reign of Terror.
In the early 1870s, the Osage, like so many other tribes, were forced off their ancestral land in Kansas by the U.S. government and moved to a less hospitable and desirable area. When the savvy Osage leaders signed the contract with the government for the rocky, seemingly useless land in northeastern Oklahoma, they inserted this provision: "That the oil, gas, coal, or other minerals covered by the lands…are hereby reserved to the Osage Tribe." Guess what? Oil was soon discovered. To get to the oil, prospectors had to pay the Osage for leases and royalties. The people of the Osage Nation and their descendants became very, very wealthy, specifically the richest people per capita on Earth.
There were some White men who deeply resented this. The U.S. government determined that many of the Osage were incapable of handling all this money and deemed them to be incompetent. White financial guardians were assigned to oversee and authorize all spending, including something as minute as buying toothpaste. For some White men that wasn't enough. Deeply envious that Indians should be so rich, there was a nefarious plot hatched to ruthlessly kill off the tribe for their own twisted financial gain.
One woman in particular appeared to be the primary target. Her name was Mollie Burkhart, and one-by-one her extended family was murdered, each by different means. As her sisters and mother died, Mollie inherited their valuable headrights to the oil. Some who investigated the murders also turned up dead. This book is the story of those grisly killings, the ineffective local police presence, and the federal response led by Special Agent Tom White, which was largely recognized as the birth of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover when Hoover used the Osage murder investigation as a showcase for his fledgling bureau.
It gets worse. Decades later, Grann's research uncovered holes in the FBI probe, including evidence of many more murders—hundreds and hundreds of additional murders--something that the author describes as "a deeper, darker, even more terrifying conspiracy which the bureau had never exposed." It was a culture of killing.
Prodigiously researched using primary and unpublished materials and written in the style of literary journalism, this is one of those few history books that is a page-turner and will keep you reading long past your bedtime.
Emer
Killers of the flower moon
I am just approx. ten chapters in and I cannot put the book down. I'm really interested to see how Edgar Hoover team will uncover the killer/s of the Osage tribe. Great history read, thriller and very well told.
Lin_Z
Native Americans are still cheated
This was slow and chunky. It was interesting to learn the background of the tribe and the state of Oklahoma, but no conclusions were drawn. Things have not changed for them. Look at the wind turbines to know that they have no rights. If there is something that white people want they just take it. The book was designed to provoke anger at the injustice, but with no where to direct that anger. Did the author think this will repeat itself? Did he think there was some way to support the tribe? He just left us hanging in the end. Even history books draw some conclusions. My book club could hardly find much else to discuss. Best nonfiction of 2017?
jill carmel Larson
Killing of the Cactus Flower
I wanted to see what other people said cause we are reading this for our book club group at the public library but I think it's kind of jerky to read and I like books to flow and I don't have to stop and start again. It really isn't a reading for pleasure book.
Michael Haughton
killers of the flower moon by David Grann
The phrase "Mollie's front stoop" did nothing to the line as it should have been the word "front step". The writer must recognized that words and phrase must work together and this was not done in this first chapter called The Vanishing.
I was lost though when the writer began to detour from Anna been missing for days. the writer began to explain the riches of the Osage natives then.
The riches of the Osage natives could have been done I'm a more concise manner that draw the attention on the readers. but unfortunately it didn't as it was too information about the natives that had no bearing on the story.
The writer also place other languages that most readers would not understand. like in the line a word as: "une tres' julie demoiselle" which was totally unnecessary. this affected my ratings.
"revealing her stricking face"was a line used by the writer but I was very puzzled as to why these words were used.it was a very poor choice of words as it added nothing to excite me.
"Her husband Ernest Burkhart rose with her"it was not clear what this meant as I was left to wonder about this. The writer didn't no justice to this line
Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances.
In this last remnant of the Wild West - where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes like Al Spencer, the "Phantom Terror," roamed - many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed to more than twenty-four, the FBI took up the case.
I was disappointed so much as to the direction of the writer when she mentioned Ernest Burkhart.the writer went on and on about his upbringings into his teenage life.This was totally unnecessary and it made my interest for the book very great. I therefore give this book a very low rating:1 out of 5
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