Episode 127: Killers of the Flower Moon

Literary Disco

In the 1920s, a disproportionate amount of people within the Osage nation were dying. The US government had forcibly relocated the Osage to a section of Oklahoma with some of the largest deposits of oil in North America. This quickly made the Osage the wealthiest people, per capita, in the world. And now they were being murdered. Corrupt local “lawmen” were incapable of producing any suspects, and any time a person claimed to have information, they wound up dead. It was up to the Federal government, with its newly formed Bureau of Investigation, to step in and try to solve the mystery. Journalist David Grann has produced the definitive account of this remarkable true story in Killers of The Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. As we quickly discovered here at the Disco, there’s something in this book for everyone. If you love history, crime stories, Westerns, family sagas, stories of social justice, courtroom dramas, or just downright good writing: this book is for you. So, uh, you should read it.

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