In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land—the very same rocky land that had been considered undesirable enough to allow them to purchase—the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study abroad in Europe. For years, they appeared to live in total prosperity.

Then, the deaths began. One by one, the Osage started to be suspiciously killed off. The family of one particular Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was violently shot. Another was tragically poisoned. As more and more were dying under mysterious circumstances, many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves found murdered. Fear and distrust took hold of the community, but the killings did not stop. In total, more than 24 members of the Osage Nation would fall victim to the string of seemingly unending and unsolvable murders.

When the death toll began to rise, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

Told in three parts, this disturbing and entirely true chapter in American history reveals unsettling and unexpected truths—from how one Osage woman’s family was directly and deeply impacted, to how the FBI as we know it today took shape while working to solve the murders, and, in looking back, how wide-reaching the toll of the violence really may have been.

I was a fan of David Grann years before we ever met—seeing his byline was a red alert that I was about to read something special. He is a master of real-life mystery, thrilling adventure, and jaw-dropping twists (See his previous book, The Lost City of Z, now a movie, for examples of all). But above all, he is interested, passionately, in what makes people unique, and why they behave in the strangest of ways.

Few tales are stranger than the one contained in Killers of the Flower Moon, a book I consider to be Grann's masterpiece. It resuscitates the true story of the Osage Indians, an Oklahoma-based tribe who were the richest people in the United States in the 1920s, per capita, because of oil buried beneath their land. Oil that was like liquid gold. Oil that so many others salivated to possess and to exploit at all costs. Which is why, one by one, the Osage began to be murdered. Grann’s in-depth reporting and desire for the truth, combined with his palpable empathy for the victims, makes Killers of the Flower Moon true crime at its finest.

We first hear the perspective of Mollie Burkhart, a wealthy Osage woman who watches as her entire family gets picked off and who worries she'll be next. We then get the story of a former Texas Ranger named Tom White, an early member of the FBI, dispatched by J. Edgar Hoover himself to unravel the mounting mystery. And then, once the horror has abated, Grann turns the tables, widening the scope to show just how deep the rot ran, and how the violence against this Indigenous people was more systemic and calculated than first believed. It was a conspiracy of epic proportions.

Killers of the Flower Moon is an amazing, infuriating story of an American injustice. And it is all the more remarkable because of how Grann unspools the story. He never—I checked—uses the word "greed." He doesn't telegraph the outrage. He doesn't have to. History pulsates with this evil, and Grann's job, expertly done, is to show us how the repeated crimes against a marginalized group of people remain relevant today.

David Grann is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine.

Grann is the author of Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, which documented one of the most sinister crimes and racial injustices in American history. Described in the New York Times as a “riveting” work that will “sear your soul,” it was a finalist for the National Book Award and a winner of the Edgar Allen Poe Award for best true crime book. It was a #1 New York Times bestseller and named one of the best books of the year by the Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Time, and other publications. Amazon selected it as the single best book of the year.

The book has been adapted into a major motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro, and Jesse Plemons, which will be released in the coming months. For middle schoolers, Grann has also released Killers of the Flower Moon: A Young Reader’s Edition, which the School Library Journal called as “imperative and enthralling as its parent text.”