Well researched and written. Sadly a true story. A testimonial to greed and arrogance. Well worth reading.

This was/is a very popular book with reviewers and many readers. The story is very important and not well known. It should be. The telling, I think, is not so wonderful. In the 1920s many Osage Indians were murdered for profit in Oklahoma. The details make for a gripping story. For this book, however, David Grann learns a lot of details after he writes the book. Then he goes (back, I assume) to Oklahoma and learns a lot more. Rather than rewrite the book, he just adds these details at the end. The story is a complex one and Grann gives it out like a journalist, in installments. It was clear to me who his main villains would be 200 pages before they were named.Now, if you despise racism, which I hope you do, Gann’s book gives us a look at crimes which were tolerated because their victims were not white. For this reason, the book, easy to read, is worth your time. A much better history of these events will be written, but probably not anytime soon. So, I recommend it. The writing is clear. There is no index. There is a fair amount of padding (an auction scene, for example, is importent only if you do not know how bidding works). However, Americans should know this story. And now you can.

While the facts are of tragic interest the writer doesn't bring the characters to life--leaving them on the pages as old and remote as the grainy photographs in the book.

Informative my hard to follow, needed to take notes to follow all the names and who did what. Not an easy read

Well written true story of the The Reign of Terror, several years in the 1920's when numerous members of the Osage Nation were murdered for their mineral rights.SYNOPSISThis is a three part story. Part one follows the murders of many members of a prominent Osage family, part two, is the story of the early FBI agents who investigated the murders and the trial, part three is the author, David Grann's investigation of the story and the aftermath of these murders; the effect it still has on their families almost one hundred years later.WHAT I LOVEDBoth informative and interesting. Some historical nonfiction authors tend to make a fascinating story dull by adding in the most banal details, I often wonder if it's to fill pages or show off to their colleagues how well they researched their subject. Grann avoided that altogether and stuck to the facts which would interest a broader audience. He made history come alive.The story itself is both shameful and very interesting. It's amazing that one hundred years ago, outright murder and embezzlement would go mostly unpunished due to a person's race. The estimate was somewhere between 26 and 100 Osage murdered in one decade. Only a very few perpetrators were prosecuted.WHAT I DIDN'T LOVEThis book covered some ugly truths. The subject matter was hard to read at times but otherwise, there wasn't a lot to not like.OVERALLI think this is an important book to read to help us understand the past and it's effects on the present and future.