Books › Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, its Chaotic Founding... its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis
Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, its Chaotic Founding... its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis
448 pages
A wildly entertaining, kaleidoscopic portrait of an underdog American city that uses basketball and bizarre history to explore the chaotic heart of the nation.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting next to the most fascinating, hyper-fixated storyteller at a bar who somehow connects a chaotic nineteenth-century land run, a modern NBA trade, and catastrophic weather into one seamless, gripping narrative. The pace is brisk and bouncy, mirroring the erratic, boom-and-bust energy of the city it profiles. It is steeped in a mood of affectionate absurdity, balancing wry humor with moments of profound, unexpected poignancy. The prose is conversational yet meticulously crafted, effortlessly jumping between gonzo memoir, urban sociology, and thrilling sports journalism. It will absolutely delight fans of narrative nonfiction who love when an author takes a seemingly niche subject and cracks it wide open to reveal a sprawling, deeply human story about ambition, community, and the sheer weirdness of the American experiment.
- Mood
- chaotic
- energetic
- awe-struck
- surprisingly poignant
- Tone
- wry
- enthusiastic
- idiosyncratic
- affectionate
- inquisitive
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- the mythos of the American West · civic ambition and hubris · the unifying power of sports · chaos versus order · the absurdity of history
- The writing
- Kaleidoscopic and conversational, blending meticulous historical research with gonzo journalistic flair and sharp, witty observations.
- The arc
- Moves from bemused curiosity at a chaotic founding to a deep, surprisingly tender appreciation for a city's resilient, underdog spirit.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love deep dives into hyper-specific subjects, narrative nonfiction that reads like a novel, and anyone fascinated by the intersection of sports, history, and urban eccentricity.
Content notes
- natural disasters
- historical racism
- domestic terrorism
About the book
"Award-winning journalist Sam Anderson's long-awaited debut is a brilliant, kaleidoscopic narrative of Oklahoma City--a great American story of civics, basketball, and destiny. Oklahoma City was born from chaos. It was founded in the bizarre but momentous Land Run of 1889, when tens of 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 outsize 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 framed the trade as the team's best hope for long-term greatness--kicked off a pivota
l 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, 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 front man Wayne Coyne; to legendary Great Plains meteorologist Gary England; 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 tape
stry woven from control and chaos, sports and civics"--
Description from Open Library.
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