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2019 Read Harder Challenge Plans
By Book Riot · 172 posts · 1766 views
By Book Riot · 172 posts · 1766 views
last updated Nov 21, 2019 02:38PM
Task #10: Read a book that takes place in a rural setting
By Book Riot · 111 posts · 1341 views
By Book Riot · 111 posts · 1341 views
last updated Nov 20, 2020 09:46PM
#22: Read a history about a period you know little about.
By Book Riot · 44 posts · 911 views
By Book Riot · 44 posts · 911 views
last updated Feb 12, 2022 05:54PM
#22 Read a history about a period you know little about.
By Asakosophia · 54 posts · 877 views
By Asakosophia · 54 posts · 877 views
last updated Oct 24, 2022 08:13AM
What Members Thought
Hour after hour, mile after mile, lurching back and forth in the wagon, Mollie crossed the wild, empty landscape, not yet carved into a country. Eventually, the light began to fail, and the driver and Mollie had to stop and set up camp. When the sun sank below the prairie floor, the sky would turn blood red and then black, the density of the darkness diluted only by the moon and the stars, from where the Osage believed that many of their clans descended. Mollie had become a traveler in the mi...more
Interesting and horrifying. An account of a series of murders in an oil-rich indigenous nation in the US. Because of corruption at every level of the system, not to mention endemic racism and a hateful system of "guardianship", the nation was decimated in what is now called the "Reign of Terror". I couldn't help but think about Canada's ongoing discussion around Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women. Different causes, different systems. But ongoing loss and trauma. Worth a read.
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A very interesting read. It's not necessarily a thrill-a-minute or filled with lyrical prose, but what it is is an incredible act of historical reconstruction. The amount of research, effort, and (I gotta believe) unimaginably boring hours filled looking through archival documents in order to put together a narrative like this is, frankly, astounding.
Quibbles: nobody really came to life for me in this book. Victims and villains alike remained somewhat inscrutable. Maybe another way to say that i ...more
Quibbles: nobody really came to life for me in this book. Victims and villains alike remained somewhat inscrutable. Maybe another way to say that i ...more
The story this book told was incredible, and I was enraged that I didn't know about it. It should be required reading for all Americans as a case study on the many forms of genocide people who came from Europe unleashed to target - formally and informally, governmentally and privately - native populations in the Americas. The book is well-researched and thorough, and ends in the present-day, with a chronicle of some of Grann's experiences researching the book and what he discovered as he did so
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This is a disturbing, fascinating, and important read to understand the history of our country and the continued legacy violence against Native Americans. Grann diligently examines the murders of the Osage people during the "Reign of Terror" in the 1920s and what it means to exist in a country with such a devastatingly narrow definition of who is human.
What's more, fights and violence over native land has not ended. Grann's book puts into context the history that has led to Standing Rock and th ...more
What's more, fights and violence over native land has not ended. Grann's book puts into context the history that has led to Standing Rock and th ...more
I really loved this book. It was non-fiction that reads like fiction, and I learned so much about an era in American history I didn't know much about. I was thrilled to learn that they're making a movie of the story, as I think it will translate beautifully to the screen...like Deadwood on steroids! I highly recommend this page turner to anyone looking to learn more about an important part of history that is too frequently glossed over.
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I had quite a hard time with this account of the Osage murders in the 1920's, one of the first crime waves that was investigated using scientific techniques like fingerprinting etc. As a book that raises awareness of a series of horrific acts, it is a valuable piece of work. But it is overly long, repetitive, and failed to draw me in at pretty much any point. It was a slog in small doses.
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Jun 28, 2018
maria
marked it as to-read
Aug 22, 2018
Kerry
marked it as to-read
Sep 26, 2018
Stephanie Williams
marked it as to-read
Sep 29, 2018
Aimee
marked it as to-read
