April 15 – April 22, 2017

The NYPL sponsored a talk by David Grann and Jeffrey Toobin. They discussed Grann’s book, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. In the 1920’s the Osage Indians were lucky enough to settle and be granted ownership on land that was on oil fields. They were unlucky because their financial success led to their numerous murders by people who wanted to grab the land. Grann talked about going to Oklahoma and interviewing people whose relatives were killed, the lack of interest in the Osage massacre and the rise of J. Edgar Hoover. I enjoyed Toobin’s books about O. J. Simpson and the Supreme Court. He writes with style and wit. He conducts interviews with the same humor and knowledge. He also keeps an eye on the time. We were told the writers would talk for forty minutes and then have a ten minute Q & A session. Bless the man. That’s exactly what happened. It was an interesting early evening talk held in the packed Celeste Bartos Forum.

 

Graphic Lessons: Recent widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine year old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies. Within hours of interviewing for a teaching position at the Windsor School, she stumbles over a stabbed and dying body in the school kitchen.

Graphic Lessons: Nine year old Dana is the only witness who overhears three people fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore?

Graphic Lessons: Something’s eating at NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case? It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.