David Grann

Photo by Matt Richman

David Grann is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the best-selling author of The Devil and Sherlock Holmes and The Lost City of Z, which has been translated into more than 20 languages. His stories have appeared in many anthologies of the best American writing, and he has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic.

MFOB FEATURED BOOK: Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. In this last remnant of the Wild West, many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed to more than 24, the FBI took up the case. David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. A masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals, and is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward American Indians that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long.

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