My 2 Cents: ‘Boomtown’ Book Reveals Lessons About Oklahoma City

There are several great books about Oklahoma City present and past, but it’s rare when an outsider, a New Yorker for crying out loud, becomes so intrigued by our hometown that a magazine story grows into a book. 

Boomtown by Sam Anderson, actually takes the reader from the primordial ooze that covered our state to the Oklahoma City Thunder's locker room, occasionally from one page to the next.

 Anderson writes, "From a distance, Oklahoma City looked like almost nothing.  Up close, it turned out to be almost everything."

And went on to say, "Oklahoma City is the great minor city of America."

Anderson's book taught me lessons about the land run I never knew and put into context recent events in Oklahoma City that I had just glided past.

This New York Times Magazine Staff writer actually walked one afternoon from the Eastern Boundary of the 1889 Land Run (in Choctaw) to the Chesapeake Energy Arena, 16 miles just to get some sense of what it was like for those early settlers.

Later he admits to committing vandalism with Flaming Lips front man Wayne Coyne.

Anderson writes about the good, the bad and the ugly of Oklahoma City in such a clever style even lifer's like me have to laugh or grimace, but certainly turn the page.

Boomtown even takes you behind the scenes of the News9 weather center during some of our deadliest storms.  

Some of Anderson's conclusions seem a little contrived, but Boomtown is thought provoking.

I highly recommend it.

I'm Kelly Ogle and that's My 2 Cents.