Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

> FAQ Home
> Tag: FBI

A Deep and Dark Conspiracy

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

by Leave a Comment

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI was utterly infuriating. I read it in anticipation of the movie that’s set to be released in a few months, and I knew it wasn’t going to be a terribly happy story. But I felt myself getting worked up about it none the less.  The Osage once possessed a territory that covered much of modern-day Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. But encroaching expansion from the US government lead to the Osage being mostly displaced […]

Take Me To Church

The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys―and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy by James Risen, Thomas Risen

by Leave a Comment

Read as part of CBR15Bingo: politics. Frank Church was a Senator from Idaho and the famous committee that bears his name was a Senate committee investigating the dirty deeds of America’s surveillance state. I’ll say this much for The Last Honest Man: the writers know why you’re here. I didn’t pick this one up to learn about the classes Frank Church took in college or what his favorite restaurant was when he was dating his wife. I picked this up to learn about Frank Church and […]

“Art thieves steal more than beautiful objects; they steal memories and identities. They steal history.”

Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures by Robert Wittman, John Shiffman

by Leave a Comment

Sometimes professional curiosity places books on my to read list, and that’s certainly how Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures ended up there. While I don’t work in an art museum something that remains a point of interest for me from my days in grad school is the world of stolen and looted art and its recovery. Historical objects can fall into this category easily (and represent a good portion of the cases covered in Priceless) but art and antiquities […]

“An Indian Affairs agent said, ‘The question will suggest itself, which of these people are the savages?”

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

by Leave a Comment

In one word: Injustice. (Bonus words: rage-inducing) This is my second read of this harrowing historical tale. When my local book club picked it out to tackle this year, I dove back in for another listen, and I was filled with just as much anger as the first time around. This book first came to me by way of my favorite podcast, Literary Disco. A quick plot summary: the people of the Osage Nation experienced the displacement and reloaction forced upon many indigenous peoples by […]

Does Crime Pay?

Boss of Bosses: The Fall of the Godfather: The FBI and Paul Castellano by Andris Kurins and Joseph F. O'Brien

Sacred by Dennis Lehane

by Leave a Comment

I hadn’t meant to review these books together but I finished Sacred sooner than I anticipated and it just makes sense to cover them both in one review…   Boss of Bosses I just finished rewatching The Godfather in honor of its 50th anniversary and I decided to tackle this one because the agents applied the movie title as a sobriquet for Paul Castellano, the mob boss of the Gambino crime family who is perhaps most famous as being the guy in John Gotti’s way that got killed in […]

The Book We Need For This Moment

Reign of Terror: How The 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump by Spencer Ackerman

by Leave a Comment

The best, simplest review I can give it is to quote from political operative Robert Wheel (@bobbybigwheel on Twitter): You know it’s a good book because every page pisses you off. I was 17 years old when we invaded Iraq. At the time, I was a champion for the war because I believed our government. Why would our government lie? Even as I began to question things in 2003 and 2004, I still voted for George W. Bush in my first presidential election. I was […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo