The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding...Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis
June 15, 2018
An irreverent look at one of the nation's quirkier cities, "one of the great weirdo cities of the world.""In the larger economy of American attention," writes Anderson, "Oklahoma City's main job has always been to be ignored." The author, a winner of a National Magazine Award, seeks to rectify this popular neglect via a rollicking history of the nation's 27th-largest city. Founded in one day in 1889, Oklahoma City has garnered a reputation for violence (its first mayor died of a gunshot wound), chaotic weather (the first photograph of a tornado was taken there), and grandiose, outsized ambition (its Will Rogers World Airport has no international flights). Anderson helpfully profiles several of the residents and leaders who have given the city its unique character, including civil rights activist Clara Luper, legendary weatherman Gary England, and Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne. But the book centers on the Oklahoma City Thunder, the NBA team formerly known as the Seattle Supersonics. Led by the supremely talented duo of Russell Westbrook (an enigmatic, hellbent-for-leather point guard) and Kevin Durant (a quietly efficient scoring machine), the Thunder reached the Finals in 2012 only to regress in subsequent years, culminating in a heartbreaking defeat in the 2016 playoffs at the hands of the Golden State Warriors, with whom Durant subsequently signed as a free agent. Anderson toggles between recent Thunder seasons and the history of Oklahoma City, portraying the team's highs and lows as symbols of the town's boom-and-bust story. Unquestionably, the residents have forged a deep bond with the Thunder. In one of the book's more touching moments, Anderson interviews an Oklahoma Supreme Court justice who notes how the arrival of the franchise in 2008 helped to heal the figurative wounds inflicted by the terrorist bombing 13 years earlier.Anderson's back-and-forth style is challenging, and he has an unfortunate penchant for gratuitous profanity. Nevertheless, he provides an entertaining history of a city that, for all its booms and busts, is never boring.
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August 27, 2018
Anderson, a New York Times Magazine staff writer, delivers a rollicking, kaleidoscopic chronicle of America’s 27th-largest city. Oklahoma City was a “pure social experiment,” born in an event called the Land Run of 1889. In that land rush, “unassigned lands” in the Indian Territory (seized from tribes that had supported the Confederacy) were opened up for settlement, and settlers rushed in to each claim 160 free acres by hammering in their stakes and fighting off competitors in a free-for-all that Anderson jokes could have more accurately been named “Reckoning of the DoomSettlers: Clusterfuck on the Prairie.” His vivid narrative of Oklahoma City’s tumultuous history draws parallels between the dramatic ups and downs of the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team, including the controversial trade of future superstar James Harden and the achievements of Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant, and the city’s larger history of booms and busts. In the latter sections, he touches on influential personalities, among them Roscoe Dunjee, who founded Oklahoma City’s first black newspaper and advanced housing integration; urban planner Sam Draper, who executed a master plan for the frontier town; legendary Great Plains weatherman Gary England; civil rights activist Clara Luper, who integrated Oklahoma City’s restaurants and lunch counters with her sit-ins in the 1950s and ’60s; and the Flaming Lips’ flamboyant front man, Wayne Coyne. Anderson’s lively and empathetic saga captures the outsize ambitions, provincial realities, and vibrant history of a quintessentially American city.
Starred review from July 1, 2018
In his biography of Oklahoma City (OKC), Anderson posits that the city's auspicious beginning, in the 1889 Land Run, fits almost everything that's happened there since; its development, its approach to business, its recently acquired basketball team, even the way it responds to its unpredictable weather. Anderson's conversational prose and spirited chapters, grouped into sections, are a good match for his information-packed style. In the section Color, for instance, his layer-cake approach stacks racial injustice and civil rights activism in OKC's history; Thunder center Daniel Orton, a hometown player, recalling a racially charged moment in his high-school basketball career; and Wayne Coyne, eccentric front man for the Flaming Lips and legendary lifelong OKC resident, convincing Anderson to help him add a literal rainbow to the city's streets overnight. The book's final section covers the devastating 1995 bombing of the Federal Building, tornadoes sweeping the area with increasing force over the last two decades, and the Thunder's explosive wins and stunning losses. Reading Anderson's time-traveling, civics-minded, and thoroughly person-focused story of OKC, one gets the feeling that his research didn't uncover a single fact that he could keep to himself, and his enthusiasm for the city's singularity?and the implications of it?is beyond infectious.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)
Starred review from July 1, 2018
Once book critic for New York magazine and currently critic-at-large at the New York Times magazine, Anderson here chronicles Oklahoma City's growth from sleepy town to booming metropolis, thanks to folks such as Sam Draper, the city's answer to Robert Moses; Flaming Lips front man Wayne Coyne; and the Oklahoma City Thunder b-ballers, with their near-championship 2012-13 season.
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