A review of the book 'Killers Of The Flower Moon: Oil, Money, Murder and the Birth of the FBI' written by David Grann. The book has recently been adapted into a film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, and Robert De Niro. It is scheduled to release on the 20th of October, 2023.
Osage County, Oklahoma, in the 1920s was where the richest people per capita in the world were to be found. The reason? Oil.
After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage Indians had untold wealth. Then, one by one, they began to be killed off.
The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target, her relatives shot or poisoned. And, as the death toll climbed, the FBI took up the case and began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.
Based on years of research and startling new evidence, this is a masterpiece of narrative non-fiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly compelling, but also emotionally devastating.
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Coming up: A review of the book 'Killers Of The Flower Moon: Oil, Money, Murder and the Birth of the FBI' written by David Grann.
Namaste Friends. My name is 'Shinil Subramanian Payamal' and you are listening to the Historylogy podcast.
Before I proceed, a full disclosure: This book was bought with my own money and not been provided to me by the author or publisher.
Little bit about the author:
David Grann is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. He is the author of the critically acclaimed books "The Wager," "The Lost City of Z," and "Killers of the Flower Moon," which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the author of "The White Darkness" and the collection "The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession."
His book "Killers of the Flower Moon" was recently adapted into a film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, and Robert De Niro. It is scheduled to release on the 20th of October, 2023.
Several of his other stories, including "The Lost City of Z" and "Old Man and the Gun," have also been adapted into major motion pictures. His investigative reporting and storytelling have garnered several honors, including a George Polk Award and an Edgar Allan Poe Award.
Let me read what is written on the back cover of the book:
QUOTE
Osage County, Oklahoma, in the 1920s was where the richest people per capita in the world were to be found. The reason? Oil.
After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage Indians had untold wealth. Then, one by one, they began to be killed off.
The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target, her relatives shot or poisoned. And, as the death toll climbed, the FBI took up the case and began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.
Based on years of research and startling new evidence, this is a masterpiece of narrative non-fiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly compelling, but also emotionally devastating.
UNQUOTE
Killers of the Flower Moon is the true story of the numerous murders of members of the Osage Native American tribe during the early 1920s.
The book starts with explaining the history of how the Osage people ended up being so rich. The money had come suddenly, swiftly, madly. It shows how the American government under President Thomas Jefferson cheated the Osage people and forced them to cede nearly a hundred million acres of their ancestral land, ultimately making them find refuge in a 50-by-125 mile area in southeastern Kansas.
An Indian Affairs commissioner had said, “The Indian must conform to the white man’s ways, peacefully if they will, forcibly if they must.”
The Osage community was incredibly wealthy because the supposedly worthless land in Oklahoma to which they had been confined since 1870 was found to contain some of the largest oil reserves in the United States.
Many Osage, unlike other wealthy Americans, could not spend their money as they pleased because of the federally imposed system of financial guardians. One guardian claimed that an Osage adult was “like a child six or eight years old, and when he sees a new toy he wants to buy it.”
“The blackest chapter in the history of this State will be the Indian guardianship over these states,” an Osage leader said, adding, “There has been millions—not thousands—but millions of dollars of many of the Osages dissipated and spent by the guardians themselves.”
This of course, resulted in the guardians stealing from and murdering their clients. As the body count began to rise, a new investigative group under the Federal Government’s Justice Department was asked to look into the murders. This obscure group named the Bureau of Investigation would be renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation i.e. the FBI.
The department had a new director, J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover assigned Tom White to the investigation. White was successful in finding the murderers and having them prosecuted.
What the investigators unravel is a sinister plot when the pattern of death is studied by the agents. It was evident that there was a plot within a plot as White became suspicious of the litany of dead witnesses.
Despite the brutality of the crimes, many whites did not mask their enthusiasm for the lurid story. And it is an amazing story, too. So amazing that at first you wonder if it can possibly have happened in modern, twentieth-century America.
There was one question that the judge and the prosecutors and the defense never asked the jurors but that was central to the proceedings: Would a jury of twelve white men ever punish another white man for killing an American Indian?
A prominent member of the Osage tribe put the matter more bluntly: “It is a question in my mind whether this jury is considering a murder case or not. The question for them to decide is whether a white man killing an Osage is murder—or merely cruelty to animals.”
While this book focuses on the one conspiracy of criminals publicized in that time that were brought to trial after the FBI’s investigation, the author discusses many other murders that were never investigated. One is sure to get outraged by the prejudice, heartsick by the killing.
The descendants of the Osage are still looking for justice and closure which will never come. It becomes pretty evident that virtually every element of society was complicit in the murderous system.
Conclusion:
The book is just under 300 pages and very well written and you will find it hard to put it down once you start reading. I highly recommend this compelling historical true crime mystery and give it a rating of 4.75/5.
The book is available for around Rs. 375/- on Amazon India and for around Rs. 500/- on Flipkart and for about $18.50 USD on Amazon USA. I will provide all the respective buy links in the show notes. Please check them out for the latest prices.
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