Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Book Group Discussion Meeting, Saturday, April 6, 2019, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

One Osage Family of Many Touched by Murder

Lizzie (poisoned)
From Left: Minnie (poisoned), Anna (shot), Mollie (almost poisoned)
Rita (blown up)

Introducing David Grann

Plagiarized from here and here:

David Grann was born on March 10, 1967 to Phyllis E. Grann and Victor Grann of Westport, Connecticut. Phyllis is the former CEO of Putnam Penguin and the first woman CEO of a major publishing firm. His father Victor is an oncologist and Director of the Bennett Cancer Center in Stamford, Connecticut. He holds master’s degrees in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy (Tufts) as well as in creative writing from Boston University. After graduating from Connecticut College in 1989, he received a Thomas Watson Fellowship and did research in Mexico. Before joining The New Yorker in 2003, Grann was a senior editor at The New Republic, and, from 1995 until 1996, the executive editor of the newspaper The Hill. He currently lives in New York with his wife and two children.

Grann’s first book, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, was also #1 New York Times bestseller and has been translated into more than twenty-five languages. Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the book was chosen as one of the best books of 2009 by the New York Times, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Bloomberg, Publishers Weekly, Christian Science Monitor, and other publications. It won the Indies Choice award for the single best nonfiction book of the year.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, documented one of the most sinister crimes and racial injustices in American history. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and a winner of the Edgar Allen Poe Award for best true crime book, a Spur Award for best work of historical nonfiction, and an Indies Choice Award for best adult nonfiction book of the year. A #1 New York Times bestseller, Killers of the Flower Moon was named one of the best books of the year by the Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, PBS, Bloomberg, GQ, Slate, Buzzfeed, Vogue, and other publications. Amazon named Killers of the Flower Moon the single best book of the year, and so did Shelf Awareness. The book is being adapted into a major motion picture, with Martin Scorsese slated to direct and Leonardo DiCaprio to play a role.

His most recent book, The White Darkness, was published in October of 2018, is a true story of adventure and obsession in the Antarctic. He has also published an anthology, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, which contains many of his New Yorker stories, and was named by Men’s Journal one of the best true crime books ever written.  

In the following video of a "PBS News Hour" book club segment, Grann answers questions from viewers about Killers of the Flower Moon.



In this much longer video delivered at the National Archives, Grann delivers a slide presentation using some of the pictures and other archival material