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, 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.
If the Thunder's up-and-down path to the NBA Finals is the primary thread running through Boom Town, rock band the Flaming Lips gets 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. 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.