Oklahoma City can be a pretty easy punching bag, and New York journalist Sam Anderson rarely misses his jabs--like this faint praise: "one of the great weirdo cities of the world." His first book, Boom Town, is a hilarious history and drive-through study of this Midwestern city born of bedlam and ambition during the 1889 Land Run. Growing with the willy-nilly annexation of the surrounding oil-rich flatlands, its 600 square miles make it one of the geographically largest cities in the world. As Anderson makes clear: it is "the natural habitat of cars," so you better have a motor vehicle if you want to take it all in. Even LA has a higher walkability score than OKC.Ostensibly on assignment to write about the improbable success of the Oklahoma City Thunder NBA expansion team, with its superstar trio of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and the grizzly-bearded dynamo James Hardin, Anderson becomes entranced by the chutzpah and resilience of the Sooners who call it home. While Oklahoma is the Choctaw word for "red people," the nickname "Sooner" comes from those who slipped over the border into "Indian Territory" before the Land Run noon shotgun start.
A nickel-and-dime city with no professional sports team, OKC managed to "steal" the Seattle SuperSonics pro basketball franchise and rename it the Thunder--in recognition of Oklahoma weather in the heart of Tornado Alley. In the process of researching how they pulled it off, Anderson digs relentlessly into the state capital's boom-and-bust history. Illustrated with archival photos, his story jumps between top-flight sportswriting and more lighthearted and diverse chapters on the idiosyncrasies of OKC. Besides the Thunder and the city's lightning-fast origin, Anderson profiles its world-class weatherman Gary England; its visionary mayor and urban renewal aficionado Stanley Draper; civil rights sit-in pioneer Clara Luper; leader of the Flaming Lips rock band Wayne Coyne; and the tragic 1995 Timothy McVeigh bombing of the Murrah Federal Building.
If the Thunder's up-and-down path to the NBA Finals is the primary thread running through Boom Town, the Flaming Lips get almost equal coverage. Perhaps this is because unappreciated Sooner boosters covet a winner. In 2006, the city even created a Flaming Lips Alley in downtown, and in 2009 the band's "Do You Realize??" was named the official rock song of Oklahoma. The irreverent Anderson, however, characterizes local boy Coyne as "the city's most famous goofball clown, a Technicolor rock 'n' roll Willy Wonka... some kind of extraterrestrial born out of one of Pink Floyd's tube amps." Boom Town may not get an OKC Chamber of Commerce blurb, but Anderson clearly has a soft spot for the city he also calls "provincial, amateur, permanently uncool." Ouch. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.
Shelf Talker: New York journalist Anderson goes to Oklahoma City to cover the Thunder and comes away with a much bigger and funnier story of a city always "on the make."