A quick, easy read, and an important piece of history: Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's rare that I find a work of non-fiction to be an easy read, but Killers of the Flower Moon flowed well while telling an important story of a great injustice that was new to me. In the early 20th Century, the Osage Indians, who had been pushed onto land in Oklahoma (just as so many Native Americans had been displaced and moved to lands not of their choosing), found that their land sat over large oil deposits.

Much to the chagrin of white people, this made the Osage quite wealthy. Sadly, blatant notions of white supremacy had the government and its citizens doing everything they could to disenfranchise the Osage, including routinely having perfectly competent adults declared incompetent, so white "guardians" could be appointed; those guardians then free to steal Osage money.

But for some, that wasn't enough. The Osage were being murdered at a staggering pace by people who had set up underhanded arrangements, through marriage, insurance policies and other means to steer Osage wealth into white hands. The indifference to the murders that underpinned these schemes was shockingly blatant, but nothing really was being done until the precursor of the FBI got involved.

With glimpses of the sociopathic madness that we'd eventually learn drove the actions of J. Edgar Hoover, he pulled the strings of an investigation that eventually curtailed the ongoing murders. The real heroes are no-nonsense lawmen who worked in the Osage Nation on behalf of the Bureau of Investigation (the FBI's name at the time). That didn't end all of the killings, as some have clearly gone unsolved and went well beyond the more commonly known reign of terror, but the federal involvement at least seemed to stop the worst of it.

Killers of the Flower Moon is a quick read, likely because of the writing skill of David Grann, its author and a veteran of The New Yorker, and it's an important piece of American history. I highly recommend this book!


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A book review: The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Devil in the White City is a fascinating tale. Combining a vicious serial killer's ongoing brutality with the concurrent World's Columbian Exposition (the World's Fair of 1893) in Chicago, Erik Larson paints a picture of a harsher time, not because of the killer but due to a host of circumstances surrounding life in the era, while illuminating the hope and progress embodied in the Fair.

Reading the book, one can't help but be disturbed by the sickness of the killer, Herman Webster Mudgett (who went by H.H. Holmes, among other aliases), while at the same time being impressed by the audacity of the people taking on a seemingly impossible task and eventually succeeding, thereby bringing pride to the city of Chicago and hope to its people in the midst of terrible economic times nationally. It's also startling to see how many famous names of the late 19th and early 20th centuries figured in the creation, progress and aftermath of the Fair.

I'd say I enjoyed reading Larson's Isaac's Storm a bit more than this book, but I think they both merit four stars. The Devil in the White City is an excellent book, well researched and only embellished (as when Larson admittedly paints certain murder scenes on the basis of his suppositions) as needed to complete the picture as responsibly as possible. Larson's writing can be a bit stiff. He's more professorial than one might like. As a result, the book doesn't flow as smoothly as some non-fiction works, but much can be forgiven with a well researched historical work (as opposed to a novel), so that must be a secondary issue. The somewhat stilted writing kept me from finishing this book sooner, but I do feel richer for having read it and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in history or even a good true crime story.


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