Boom Town - by Sam Anderson (Paperback)

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 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 Townannounces the arrival of an exciting literary voice. Sam Anderson, former book critic for New York magazine and now a staffwriter 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 Townoffers a remarkable look at the urban tapestry woven from control and chaos, sports and civics"--

Book Synopsis

"A bonkers, kitchen-sink cultural history of Oklahoma City, with the local Thunder's would-be dynasty as its driving soul."--The New York Times

"Dizzyingly pleasurable . . . curious, hilarious, and wildly erudite."--The New Yorker

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Reviews, 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.

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.

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

Review Quotes

"Sly [and] entertaining . . . For all of the surrealism in [Franz Kafka's Oklahoma-set] Amerika, whose runic metaphysics helped give rise to the adjective 'Kafkaesque, ' the manuscript doesn't begin to match the genuinely American phantasmagoria of Boom Town. What's most surreal about Oklahoma City, as brilliantly rendered in Anderson's wild and gusty history, is that this city is for real."--The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

"[Boom Town is a] dizzyingly pleasurable new history of Oklahoma City. If 'dizzyingly pleasurable' and 'Oklahoma City' aren't words you expect to see in the same sentence, Anderson's book wants to convince you that the capital of America's forty-sixth state is the most secretly fascinating place on earth. . . . Anderson illuminates both the romance and the hubris of a city that went from wild gunfights to unrestrained freeways in a single human lifetime. . . . Boom Town is a dazzling urban history. . . . Anderson writes beautifully. . . Anderson's curious, hilarious, and wildly erudite book vividly evokes the bond he describes here, as it holds together, quivers, and remakes itself over the following century."--The New Yorker

"If you could snap your fingers and instantly invent a city from scratch, you'd be hard-pressed to conjure a weirder one than Oklahoma City. . . . [Boom Town is] an enthralling, hilarious, and unexpectedly moving biography of Oklahoma City that already feels like a classic of its kind. Think City of Quartz if Mike Davis was a basketball junkie (City of Courts?) or if Jane Jacobs had co-written Blazing Saddles. . . . [Anderson] will have you opening your preferred travel app, idly pricing tickets to the Sooner State."--Slate

"A delightfully deep dive into 'one of the great weirdo cities of the world' . . . [Boom Town is] one of the more unexpectedly entertaining--and stimulating--nonfiction romps in recent memory. Anderson deftly weaves together history, personalities and his own observations."--San Francisco Chronicle

"It's hard to believe that any biography of any American city could be more consistently interesting, entertaining and informative than this one."--NPR

"In writing both idiosyncratic and unerring, this culture critic proves that any subject, in the right hands, can mesmerize and delight. . . . Befitting the title, OKC is always on the verge of triumph (oil booms, redevelopment) and disaster (oil busts, tornadoes), a young locale more archetypal of the American mythos than the 26 bigger cities in the country."--Vulture

"Boom Town serves as a guidebook to a corner of America by turns utterly unfamiliar and easily recognizable. . . . Anderson writes about Oklahoma City with zeal and devotion, his rollicking prose perfectly suited to Oklahoma City's boom mentality. He expertly deploys singular characters to illustrate the city's strangeness. . . . The city demands attention."-- The Wall Street Journal

"Boom Town [is a] nuanced, immersive portrait of Oklahoma City. . . . This is the strength, the unlikely triumph, of Boom Town, which takes a city almost universally overlooked and turns it into a metaphor for, well, everything."--The Washington Post

About the Author

Sam Anderson is currently a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. Formerly a book critic for New York Magazine and regular contributor to Slate, Anderson's journalism and essays have won numerous awards, including the National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism. He lives in New York with his family.