Killers of the Flower Moon Themes

Killers of the Flower Moon describes the Osage Reign of Terror—a period that stretched from the early 1920s to the 1930s, in which uncountable numbers of the oil-rich Osage Indian tribe were murdered in a mad grab for valuable shares of the tribe’s mineral trust. At the center of this tragedy was a deep, permeating racism that not only sought to diminish the Osage, but in many cases denied them their humanity entirely. Through a…

Though the events it portrays took place nearly a century ago, Killers of the Flower Moon is very much a book for the modern era. Through his investigation into the Osage Reign of Terror and the reverberations the grisly ordeal has had throughout American history, David Grann paints a far-reaching and yet intimate portrait of how greed, entitlement, and corruption have defined American history, American society, and American institutions. Grann shows how entitlement turns into…

David Grann chooses to close out Killers of the Flower Moon with a pained look at the ways in which history often obscures the truth, as much of it is based on a foundation of lies and fabrications. Grann uses the story of the Osage tribe and the Reign of Terror to argue that even though the truth is necessary, healing, and transformative, history—written by the “victors”—often perpetuates harmful and frustrating lies when it ought…