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

challenging emotional informative medium-paced

4.5

This book was fantastically written and well paced, keeping me engaged the entire time I was reading it. This wasn't something that was ever covered in my schooling. I took 3 years of American history in high school and did not cover this. I'm incredibly upset about that. To know that American secondary schools still rely on the false trope that native Americans assisted white settlers, some That stuff probably happened, and now racism isn't real anymore is really upsetting. I'm really glad that there's a book that outlines the atrocities against the Osage people in such detail, so it's harder to brush these atrocities under a rug and try and write them out of history. The author's dedication to seeking out the reality of the situation beyond the efforts of the FBI is what made the book so impactful. Often when there's a book about an issue that impacted a very small group of individuals, a person from outside that group writing about it feels like an ethnography in a bad way. To know the lengths Grann went to to find justice for the Osage people, or at least reveal the reality of the situation keep this book on the side of good. The title being derived from the poem about Molly Burkhardt was a fantastic thematic choice. It made the reality of the situation more tangible to somebody is far removed from it as I am.
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