In “The Lost Sons of Omaha,” the journalist Joe Sexton investigates a saga of death that occurred in Nebraska during the racial unrest after the killing of George Floyd.
May 9, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET
THE LOST SONS OF OMAHA: Two Young Men in an American Tragedy, by Joe Sexton
A writer needs distance to make sense of turbulent times, to sift right from wrong and see the larger meaning. We’re only now beginning to grapple with the events of 2020, an epochal year in modern American history, up there with 1941, 1968 and 2001. Some of the first books to examine that year have set a high bar. “His Name Is George Floyd,” by the journalists Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, captured the crushing force of American racism through a meticulous biography of the man whose killing at the hands of a police officer led to nationwide racial protests. The New Yorker writer Luke Mogelson’s “The Storm Is Here” embedded readers in the far-right backlash to Black Lives Matter, Covid safety measures and Donald J. Trump’s election defeat, culminating in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“The Lost Sons of Omaha,” by the journalist Joe Sexton, examines a different tragedy, one that briefly made national headlines and then slipped under the endless waves of breaking news. On May 30, 2020, five days after George Floyd’s murder, the lives of Jake Gardner, a white bar owner and Marine veteran, and James Scurlock, a Black protester and new father, collided. As in many cities, protests had convulsed...
Images of the Whitegate fuel protests earlier this month were altered to make it appear gardaí were violent towards protesters. The AI-doctored images were shared widely online, including by inter...