Boom Town

The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, its Chaotic Founding... its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis

By: Sam Anderson

Narrated by: Sam Anderson

Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

A New York Times notable book of 2018. Named a best book of 2018 by NPR, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Economist and Deadspin.

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

Long-Listed for the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

A New York Times Editor's Choice

©2018 Sam Anderson (P)2018 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“[Anderson] has discovered a subject that energizes him the way a birch-bark canoe roused John McPhee, the way a French meal stoked M.F.K. Fisher, and the way a burning Bronx fired up Jonathan Mahler.... Unlike navel-gazing yappers like Hunter S. Thompson, Anderson doesn’t splatter himself all over the story. He never drowns out anyone with his sly, entertaining voice. His sensibility, sophisticated though it may be, is generous enough to stand up and offer its seat to others... 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)

“[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 46th state is the most secretly fascinating place on earth.... It’s a peculiarly concentrated locus of old American energies, creative, destructive, and bizarre, and 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 about the human beings he encounters, both living and dead. A minute-by-minute account of the Oklahoma City bombing left me almost in tears.... Anderson’s curious, hilarious, and wildly erudite book vividly evokes the bonk he describes here, as it holds together, quivers, and remakes itself over the following century.” (Brian Phillips, The New Yorker)

“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)

Wonderful

Having lived in Norman, OK for 22 years the book brought back many memories. Reliving the bombing and tornadoes was hard. Enjoyed learning more about OK and the weather.

Just wow.

As an OKC native, and huge Thunder fan, I didn’t know half the details of the history of OKC that this book provided. Interwoven with the success and heartbreak of our beloved sports franchise, this book has it all. Highly recommended.

Fun facts keep you coming back

Having grown up in Oklahoma I had lived through many of the events that make up this book. However, with each stories retelling, I learned amazing new details that enriched the historical value for me gave me a broader perspective on Oklahoma culture.

well told history of okc and the okc thunder

I really enjoyed this authors take on the history of OKC and the Thunder.

astoundingly good

This book is fantastic, one of the best I have listened to on Audible. It's a riveting history of Oklahoma City braided with the story of their NBA team, the Thunder. If you are at all interested in basketball or American history, you will enjoy this.

Great Read!

As a native of Oklahoma City I found this book really informative. I was reminded of many experiences I forgot and learned some things I didn't know.

highly recomend

Good read! Fastest I have ever read a book,could not break away from it. Worth reading.

Excellent history book about a weird place

Great book for curious minds. NBA, city planning, weather, etc. going back and forth through time and topics.

made me care so much

wild ride. OKC is deeply fascinating. Anderson is a great storyteller, he managed to make me care a lot more about basketball then I ever have before. the chapter about the bombing was towards the end, which was excellent because it was contextualized by the experiences and positionality and legacies of all the people he introduced you to in prior chapters. made me cry. a masterpiece.

Interesting city

It’s an interesting story about a place you never think about. It’s a cool breakdown of a city that was made rather than evolved.