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An exhaustively researched, deeply painful account of a lost chapter of American history.

I had previously read and loved David Grann's The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, so I knew I was going to get a thought-provoking deep dive. I found myself appalled at the extent of the senseless, systematic violence against the Osage people, and how for so long it was relegated to a footnote in history.

In the 1920s on the Osage reservation in Oklahoma, members of the tribe begin to mysteriously die in droves. Some are murdered, some are victims of suspected poisonings – one member's house even explodes. The carnage became known as the Reign of Terror. This happened, the book explores, because of racism and greed. Oil had been discovered some years before on Osage land, and so every member of the tribe was entitled to huge sums of money that made them some of the richest people in the country. As Grann explores, many prominent whites in the community targeted the Osage for their wealth, killing them in order to obtain their fortunes. This was easy to do because of racist laws that put many of the Osage in conservatorships to white peers, as it was thought they were not able to manage their money on their own.

Grann also details the investigation to find those responsible for the murders. Tom White, a Texas Ranger turned prison warden turned Bureau of Investigation agent, shines on the page as a rare man of integrity in these violent, corrupt times. Due to White's investigation, several men connected to the murders are arrested and convicted. But the story doesn't end there. Grann's own research in the 2010s revealed an even larger conspiracy, with more victims and more perpetrators, turning on its head White's narrative that one man, William Hale, was personally responsible for the Reign of Terror.

This was an interesting and eye-opening read. I knocked off one star, however, because while I found Grann's research and reporting on this extremely important, I had less fun reading it than I did the Lost City of Z. The subject matter is just so grim through and through, and sometimes presented in a dry manner. I especially struggled in the middle, when so many names were thrown at me it was hard to follow who was who. But I am glad I read it, and came away with it feeling educated on a tragedy that was so thoroughly covered up and forgotten that it shocks the conscience. Essential reading for the understanding of American history.