Sam Anderson

Sam Anderson’s ability to find motifs in a *historical narrative* is truly incredible. There are so many things I learned about Oklahoma, meteorology (all hail Gary England), civil rights (Clara Luper and Roscoe Dunjee are the real MVPs), The Flaming Lips, and an era of the NBA I had been checked out of while it was happening because my dear Lakers were awful at the time. It also helps that there is a connection, albeit strained, to my former home of Seattle. I only wish I’d read this show more before my super-brief stop in OKC last summer! show less

If I call it the third best non-fiction book I've read in the last year, that's still high praise, indeed. Informative, interesting, and almost maddeningly well-written, it is the sort of book that gives you a delightful tour of territory that you thought you couldn't care less about, and even more weirdly, kind of makes me want to go to Oklahoma. I mean, what the heck is that?

This book has an ugly dustjacket. And that's about all the criticism I can come up with. The book is a history of Oklahoma City, told by interweaving several strands from history with an account of the city's attainment of its long-held dream to become a major league sports town by obtaining the former Seattle NBA franchise and the team's subsequent misadventures. This strand alternates with a fairly linear account of the city's passage from its chaotic land run origins, through an urban show more renewal from Hell fiasco in the years after WWII, to its turn-of-the-century attempt to reinvent itself as a sophisticated hipster refuge. Through it all, we proceed back and forth to seeing this history and life there today through the prism of such locals as end-of-the-bench basketball player Daniel Orton, TV weathercasting celebrity Gary England, rock star Wayne Coyne, OKC's Robert Moses, Stanley Draper, and two David Paynes--the original land run mover-and-shaker and his namesake, a stormchaser of today.

This is all compulsively readable and I often had difficulty putting it down. His feel for Oklahoma City is, overall, very good. He gets one thing wrong, though, and it's a pretty big thing: he equates OKC's downtown with life in the place as a whole. Yes, downtown was a moonscape during the seventies and eighties, and that wasn't a good thing. But life went on, pretty well, around the metro area. Yes, I wish that Jane Jacobs were in charge of America's city planning. Until that happens, though, entertainment and commercial life in general are going to follow the population and the money. Hence, those features of urban life began migrating northwestward, to the Northwest Expressway during the sixties, and further out to the Memorial Road corridor later, around the turn of the century. Otherwise, a great and memorable book, superbly written, and a joy to read. show less

This is narrative non-fiction at its best. Anderson does such a wonderful job of painting the city and its people, and most notably their mentality, that I was completely immersed by the breadth and depth of this neglected city's culture and history. He has managed to make the city feel like a literary character.

I received a copy of this book free from the publisher for review.