Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, its Chaotic Founding… its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis Audiobook (Free)

A NEW YORK TIMES Well known BOOK OF 2018

NAMED ONE OF THE BETTER BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA CHRONICLE, THE ECONOMIST AND DEADSPIN

Award-winning journalist Sam Anderson’s long-awaited debut is usually an excellent, kaleidoscopic narrative of Oklahoma City-a great American tale of civics, basketball, and destiny.

Oklahoma Town was born from chaos. It had been founded in a bizarre but momentous “Property Operate” in 1889, when a large number of people lined up along the borders of about Increase City: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma Town, its Chaotic Founding… its Purloined Basketball Team, as well as the Dream of Learning to be a World-class Metropolis Oklahoma Territory and rushed in at noon to stake their promises. Since then, it has been a town torn between your wild energy that drives its outsized ambitions, as well as the causes of purchase that seek lasting progress. Nowhere was this dynamic better understood than in the drama of the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team’s 2012-13 time of year, when the Thunder’s amazing general manager, Sam Presti, ignited a firestorm by trading future superstar Wayne Harden just days before the first game. Presti’s all-in gamble on “the procedure”-the patient, methodical management design that dictated the trade as the team’s best expect long-term greatness-kicked off a pivotal year in the city’s history, one which would consist of pitched battles over urban planning, a series of cataclysmic tornadoes, as well as the frenzied hope that an NBA tournament might finally deliver the glory which the city experienced always dreamed.

Boom City announces the introduction of a thrilling literary voice. Sam Anderson, former reserve critic for New York magazine and now a staff article writer at the New York Times journal, unfolds an idiosyncratic mixture of American history, sports reporting, urban studies, gonzo memoir, and much more to inform the unusual but compelling tale of the American city whose unique mixture of geography and history make it a remarkable microcosm of the democratic test. Filled with heroes ranging from NBA superstars Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook; to Flaming Lip area oddball frontman Wayne Coyne; to renowned Great Plains meteorologist Gary Britain; to Stanley Draper, Oklahoma City’s would-be Robert Moses; to civil rights activist Clara Luper; to the citizens and community servants who survived the notorious 1995 bombing from the Alfred P. Murrah federal building, Boom Town offers a remarkable look at the urban tapestry woven from control and chaos, sports activities and civics.