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Book Boom Town

    Book Details:
  • Author : Sam Anderson
  • Publisher : Crown
  • Release : 2018-08-21
  • ISBN : 0804137323
  • Pages : 513 pages

Download or read book Boom Town written by Sam Anderson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant, kaleidoscopic narrative of Oklahoma City—a great American story of civics, basketball, and destiny, from award-winning journalist Sam Anderson NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Chicago Tribune • San Francisco Chronicle • The Economist • Deadspin Oklahoma City was born from chaos. It was founded in a bizarre but momentous “Land Run” in 1889, when thousands of people lined up along the borders of Oklahoma Territory and rushed in at noon to stake their claims. Since then, it has been a city torn between the wild energy that drives its outsized ambitions, and the forces of order that seek sustainable progress. Nowhere was this dynamic better realized than in the drama of the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team’s 2012-13 season, when the Thunder’s brilliant general manager, Sam Presti, ignited a firestorm by trading future superstar James Harden just days before the first game. Presti’s all-in gamble on “the Process”—the patient, methodical management style that dictated the trade as the team’s best hope for long-term greatness—kicked off a pivotal year in the city’s history, one that would include pitched battles over urban planning, a series of cataclysmic tornadoes, and the frenzied hope that an NBA championship might finally deliver the glory of which the city had always dreamed. Boom Town announces the arrival of an exciting literary voice. Sam Anderson, former book critic for New York magazine and now a staff writer at the New York Times magazine, unfolds an idiosyncratic mix of American history, sports reporting, urban studies, gonzo memoir, and much more to tell the strange but compelling story of an American city whose unique mix of geography and history make it a fascinating microcosm of the democratic experiment. Filled with characters ranging from NBA superstars Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook; to Flaming Lips oddball frontman Wayne Coyne; to legendary Great Plains meteorologist Gary England; to Stanley Draper, Oklahoma City's would-be Robert Moses; to civil rights activist Clara Luper; to the citizens and public servants who survived the notorious 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building, Boom Town offers a remarkable look at the urban tapestry woven from control and chaos, sports and civics.

Book Picturing Indian Territory

    Book Details:
  • Author : B. Byron Price
  • Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
  • Release : 2016-10-10
  • ISBN : 0806156937
  • Pages : 161 pages

Download or read book Picturing Indian Territory written by B. Byron Price and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2016-10-10 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the nineteenth century, the land known as “Indian Territory” was populated by diverse cultures, troubled by shifting political boundaries, and transformed by historical events that were colorful, dramatic, and often tragic. Beyond its borders, most Americans visualized the area through the pictures produced by non-Native travelers, artists, and reporters—all with differing degrees of accuracy, vision, and skill. The images in Picturing Indian Territory, and the eponymous exhibit it accompanies, conjure a wildly varied vision of Indian Territory’s past. Spanning nearly nine decades, these artworks range from the scientific illustrations found in English naturalist Thomas Nuttall’s journal to the paintings of Frederic Remington, Henry Farny, and Charles Schreyvogel. The volume’s three essays situate these works within the historical narratives of westward expansion, the creation of an “Indian Territory” separate from the rest of the United States, and Oklahoma’s eventual statehood in 1907. James Peck focuses on artists who produced images of Native Americans living in this vast region during the pre–Civil War era. In his essay, B. Byron Price picks up the story at the advent of the Civil War and examines newspaper and magazine reports as well as the accounts of government functionaries and artist-travelers drawn to the region by the rapidly changing fortunes of the area’s traditional Indian cultures in the wake of non-Indian settlement. Mark Andrew White then looks at the art and illustration resulting from the unrelenting efforts of outsiders who settled Indian and Oklahoma Territories in the decades before statehood. Some of the artworks featured in this volume have never before been displayed; some were produced by more than one artist; others are anonymous. Many were completed by illustrators on-site, as the events they depicted unfolded, while other artists relied on written accounts and vivid imaginations. Whatever their origin, these depictions of the people, places, and events of “Indian Country” defined the region for contemporary American and European audiences. Today they provide a rich visual record of a key era of western and Oklahoma history—and of the ways that art has defined this important cultural crossroads.

Book Red Earth

Download or read book Red Earth written by Bonnie Lynn-Sherow and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the great Land Rush of 1889, Oklahoma territory was an island of wildness, home to one of the last tracts of biologically diverse prairie. In the space of a quarter century, the territory had given over to fenced farmsteads, with even the racial diversity of its recent past simplified. In this book, Bonnie Lynn-Sherow describes how a thriving ecology was reduced by market agriculture. Examining three central Oklahoma counties with distinct populations—Kiowas, white settlers, and black settlers—she analyzes the effects of racism, economics, and politics on prairie landscapes while addressing the broader issues of settlement and agriculture on the environment. Drawing on a host of sources—oral histories, letters and journals, and agricultural and census records—Lynn-Sherow examines Oklahoma history from the Land Rush to statehood to show how each community viewed its land as a resource, what its members planted, how they cooperated, and whether they succeeded. Anglo settlers claimed the choice parcels, introduced mechanized farming, and planted corn and wheat; blacks tended to grow cotton on lands unsuited for its cultivation; and Kiowas strove to become pastoralists. Lynn-Sherow shows that as each group vied for control over its environment, its members imposed their own cultural views on the uses of nature—and on the legitimacy of the 'other' in their own relationship with the red earth. Lynn-Sherow further reveals that racism, both institutionalized and personal, was a significant factor in determining how, where, by whom, and to what ends land was used in Oklahoma. She particularly assesses the impact of USDA policy on land use and, by extension, environmental and social change. As agricultural agents, railroads, and local banks encouraged white settlers to plant row crops and convert to market farms, they also discriminated against Indians and blacks. And, as white settlers prospered, they in turn altered the relationship of Indians and African Americans with the land. The transformation of Oklahoma Territory was a protracted power struggle, with one people's relationship to the land rising to prominence while banishing the others from history. Red Earth provides a perceptive look at how Oklahoma quickly became homogenized, mirroring events throughout the West to show how culture itself can be a major agent of ecological change.

Book Beautiful Land

Download or read book Beautiful Land written by Nancy Antle and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annie Mae's family is looking forward to beginning a new life—on their own land. When the Oklahoma Territory is opened in 1889, they and thousands of other settlers race across the border to claim some land of their own. But there is not enough for everyone, and Annie Mae is afraid of trouble ahead. Even if they find their beautiful land, will they be able to keep it?

Book A History of the State of Oklahoma

Download or read book A History of the State of Oklahoma written by Luther B. Hill and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Brief History of Oklahoma

Download or read book Brief History of Oklahoma written by Frank S. Wyatt and published by . This book was released on 1919 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Indians in Oklahoma

    Book Details:
  • Author : Rennard Strickland
  • Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
  • Release : 1980
  • ISBN : 9780806116754
  • Pages : 196 pages

Download or read book The Indians in Oklahoma written by Rennard Strickland and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1980 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outlines the lifestyle of the Indians in Oklahoma and their value system despite the white-man's encroachment of their land and widespread stereotyping.

Book 1889

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael J. Hightower
  • Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
  • Release : 2018-09-20
  • ISBN : 0806162341
  • Pages : 345 pages

Download or read book 1889 written by Michael J. Hightower and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After immigrants flooded into central Oklahoma during the land rush of 1889 and the future capital of Oklahoma City sprang up “within a fortnight,” the city’s residents adopted the slogan “born grown” to describe their new home. But the territory’s creation was never so simple or straightforward. The real story, steeped in the politics of the Gilded Age, unfolds in 1889, Michael J. Hightower’s revealing look at a moment in history that, in all its turmoil and complexity, transcends the myth. Hightower frames his story within the larger history of Old Oklahoma, beginning in Indian Territory, where displaced tribes and freedmen, wealthy cattlemen, and prospective homesteaders became embroiled in disputes over public land and federal government policies. Against this fraught background, 1889 travels back and forth between Washington, D.C., and the Oklahoma frontier to describe the politics of settlement, public land use, and the first stirrings of urban development. Drawing on eyewitness accounts, Hightower captures the drama of the Boomer incursions and the Run of ’89, as well as the nascent urbanization of the townsite that would become Oklahoma City. All of these events played out in a political vacuum until Congress officially created Oklahoma Territory in the Organic Act of May 1890. The story of central Oklahoma is profoundly American, showing the region to have been a crucible for melding competing national interests and visions of the future. Boomers, businessmen, cattlemen, soldiers, politicians, pundits, and African and Native Americans squared off—sometimes peacefully, often not—in disagreements over public lands that would resonate in western history long after 1889.

Book The Observer  Letters from Oklahoma Territory

Download or read book The Observer Letters from Oklahoma Territory written by Kenneth J. Peek and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2002-09-18 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: R.H. Wessel was the owner, editor, and publisher of the Frederick Enterprise / Frederick Press, and a leading citizen from the day he first came to Frederick, Oklahoma, in 1902 until his death in 1956. He is best known for his column "The Observer," for which this book is titled. He left behind a considerable legacy of his adventurous life through letters, photographs, documents, and historic files. His experiences in Lawton during the 1901 Land Lottery and the following homestead years in Frederick are covered in this book. As a newspaperman, with a love for telling a story, his letters are an incredible documentation of life on the Oklahoma frontier, as well as his love story by mail with Margaret Scow, the bride he brought to Oklahoma after "proving up" on his homestead and obtaining his own newspaper.

Book The Settlement of Oklahoma

Download or read book The Settlement of Oklahoma written by Solon Justus Buck and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Dreams to Dust

    Book Details:
  • Author : Sheldon Russell
  • Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
  • Release : 2012-11-27
  • ISBN : 0806182016
  • Pages : 295 pages

Download or read book Dreams to Dust written by Sheldon Russell and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-11-27 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a fateful day in 1889, the Oklahoma land rush begins, and for thousands of settlers the future is up for grabs. One of those people is Creed McReynolds, fresh from the East with a lawyer’s education and a head full of aspirations. The mixed-blood son of a Kiowa mother and a U.S. Cavalry doctor, Creed lands in Guthrie station, the designated Territorial Capital, where he must prove that he is more than the half-blood kid once driven from his own land. In recounting the precipitous rise and catastrophic fall of the jerrybuilt city of Guthrie, author Sheldon Russell immerses us in the lives of Creed and other memorable characters whose ambitions echo the taming of the frontier—and whose fates hold lessons as important today as they were more than a hundred years ago. Among the people McReynolds must contend with is Abaddon Damon. A ruthless newspaper publisher, Abaddon is quick to strike any bargain that will bring him the power he craves, and like many others, Creed McReynolds is swept into his whirlwind of greed and deception. Creed becomes the wealthiest man in the Territory—but at an unbearable cost to himself, the dreams of others, and the dignity of his mother’s people. Dreams to Dust takes readers back to the early days of Oklahoma Territory—a sometimes dangerous place filled with nefarious dealings, where violence lurks behind even casual encounters—to tell the story of frontier men and women gambling everything to find their fortune on the windswept southern plains.

Book The Story of Oklahoma City  Oklahoma

Download or read book The Story of Oklahoma City Oklahoma written by William F. Kerr and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Government and Development of Oklahoma Territory

Download or read book Government and Development of Oklahoma Territory written by Dora Ann Stewart and published by . This book was released on 1933 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Dreams to Dust

    Book Details:
  • Author : Sheldon Russell
  • Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
  • Release : 2012-08-10
  • ISBN : 0806184965
  • Pages : 306 pages

Download or read book Dreams to Dust written by Sheldon Russell and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-08-10 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a fateful day in 1889, the Oklahoma land rush begins, and for thousands of settlers the future is up for grabs. One of those people is Creed McReynolds, fresh from the East with a lawyer’s education and a head full of aspirations. The mixed-blood son of a Kiowa mother and a U.S. Cavalry doctor, Creed lands in Guthrie station, the designated Territorial Capital, where he must prove that he is more than the half-blood kid once driven from his own land. In recounting the precipitous rise and catastrophic fall of the jerrybuilt city of Guthrie, author Sheldon Russell immerses us in the lives of Creed and other memorable characters whose ambitions echo the taming of the frontier—and whose fates hold lessons as important today as they were more than a hundred years ago. Among the people McReynolds must contend with is Abaddon Damon. A ruthless newspaper publisher, Abaddon is quick to strike any bargain that will bring him the power he craves, and like many others, Creed McReynolds is swept into his whirlwind of greed and deception. Creed becomes the wealthiest man in the Territory—but at an unbearable cost to himself, the dreams of others, and the dignity of his mother’s people. Dreams to Dust takes readers back to the early days of Oklahoma Territory—a sometimes dangerous place filled with nefarious dealings, where violence lurks behind even casual encounters—to tell the story of frontier men and women gambling everything to find their fortune on the windswept southern plains.

Book Oklahoma City

    Book Details:
  • Author : Terry L. Griffith
  • Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
  • Release : 1999-09-15
  • ISBN : 1439627053
  • Pages : 132 pages

Download or read book Oklahoma City written by Terry L. Griffith and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 1999-09-15 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Located along the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, at a stop known as Oklahoma Station, Oklahoma City was born on April 22, 1889, at 12 noon. By 6:00 p.m., she had a population of around 10,000 citizens. As with any birth, there were many firsts in the newly opened territory, and many of these landmark events have been captured and preserved in historic photographs. With images culled from the archives of the authors own vast personal collection as well as the Oklahoma Historical Society and other collections, the stories of prosperity and development of the areas first settlers are told through Statehood. In light of this perseverance, it is no wonder that Theodore Roosevelt announced, Men and Women of Oklahoma. I was never in your country until last night, but I feel at home here. I am blood of your blood, and bone of your bone, and I am bound to some of you, and to your sons, by the strongest ties that can bind one man to another.