There are available on youtube some "drive through" videos of Osage County, Oklahoma. If you haven't had the chance to drive through the county yourself, take a few minutes and watch one of those videos just to understand what it looks like now. Then start this book remembering that the events depicted in it are now almost a hundred years in the past. It will make you appreciate all the more the masterful description given by David Grann.This is a tough story about a tough area that had seen nothing but tough times until oil was discovered in what seemed to be endless quantities.With the oil came money, lots of it. And the struggle to control that money turns deadly. Exploitation of people by gender, social class and national origin runs rampant; with the biggest irony being that it is the Native Americans who are exploited by the "Anglo" Americans.Throw in some brave Texas lawmen, an already eccentric and inconsistent young J Edgar Hoover, and some remarkably strong women who managed to tell their stories to their daughters and granddaughters and this story just crackles with excitement and emotion.Mister Grann is a graduate of what used to known as Connecticut College For Women. One of the intended consequences of having that venerable institution become a coeducational college is that the male graduates have tendencies to write well about the women's point of view. The women leaders connected to CC such as Jane Addams, Mary Morrisson, Rosemary Park, and the Wright and Larrabee sisters would all be proud.Read this book because it needs to be part of your Education with a capital E.

This is an important story and a remarkable piece of reporting. Unfortunately, the prose was lackluster, sometimes to the point of distracting from the narrative. Scene-setting and artful detail aren't this author's strong suit, and his attempts to flesh out the characters and the setting often fell flat, in my opinion. I wanted to know more about the Osage and about life in Oklahoma in the 20s in general and so on; I mostly got two-dimensional, crudely sketched renditions, and that bothered me. There's color in this book, but it's painted using a frustratingly limited palette.Still, in a way, Killers of the Flower Moon is a real triumph of substance over style. That's because it manages to be a great piece of work despite its uninspiring prose and fairly wooden set pieces. It's fantastically well-researched. The bones of the story -- the procedural stuff -- is meticulously fitted together. The plot and pacing work beautifully. And, the outrageous injustice at the heart of the book is vital and relevant and deserves exposure to as wide an audience as possible. Despite my ambivalence, I was riveted.

After being moved from pillar to post by the U.S. Government, the surviving members of the Osage nation were shunted to a barren patch of land in Oklahoma, left to eke out a hardscrabble existence. As luck would have it, that bleak land would turn out to be oil rich, and by the 1920s that oil would make the tribe members among the wealthiest people in the world.Their sudden wealth would lead to numerous schemes to deprive them of their money. It would escalate into a scheme of multiple murders. This is a fascinating look at one of the darker patches of our history, one that reflects quite poorly on us as a nation. The murder scheme was quite involved, and the ensuing investigation only covered the tip of the iceberg, resulting in an inadequate application of justice. It really was a shameful travesty. Still, it makes for a gripping, well-written saga, augmented by archival photos.

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.

I'll keep it simple.I'm horrified and ashamed of the atrocities people will commit to gain extra cash in their pockets. This story needed to be told, and it fascinating the amount of detail that went into describing the horrors of that period of time. Certainly a lot of jumping off points into further readings from history.Reads quickly, easily, and is highly thought provoking. Worth the time. I highly recommend it.One aspect that had it been included, would have really helped solidify some of the information is a time line with events and people. There are so many people involved, and so many connections and mysteries, that I was beginning to forget when something happened and who was involved, or how someone was related, or what their role was. Its not that I forgot, but I would love to refer back to that in conversations about the book. I suppose I could have taken notes, but that didn't occur until later. And so I just leave that as a suggestion. A couple of pages at end of book with a quick who's who.