From the tectonic formation of Oklahoma’s varied landscape to the recovery and renewal following the Oklahoma City bombing, this readable book includes both the well-known and the not-so-familiar of the state’s people, events, and places. W. David Baird and Danney Goble offer fresh perspectives on such widely recognized history makers as Sequoyah, the 1889 Land Run, and the Glenn Pool oil strike. But they also give due attention to Black Seminole John Horse, Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Coach Bertha Frank Teague’s 40-year winning streak with the Byng Lady Pirates, and other lesser-known but equally important milestones. The result is a rousing, often surprising, and ever-fascinating story.

Oklahoma history is an intricate tapestry of themes, stories, and perspectives, including those of the state’s diverse population of American Indians, the land’s original human occupants. An appendix provides suggestions for trips to Oklahoma’s historic places and for further reading. Enhanced by more than 40 illustrations, including 11 maps, this definitive history of the state ensures that experiences shared by Oklahomans of the past will be passed on to future generations.

In the past 150 years as many as two thousand Oklahoma hamlets, villages, towns, and even cities have bloomed and then died. Some have faded away, with not even a fallen chimney to mark their location. Others have left ghostly marks of their past--mounds of rubble grown over with grass or crumbling walls of buildings. A few still cling tenaciously to life, with a few inhibitants left to call them home.

In these pages John W. Morris tells about 130 of the towns. He describes how and why each was established, the activities of its people in its heyday, and the conditions that cuased it to fade away. Of course, to tell about the towns is also to tell about the people who built them and lived in them--and once had high hopes for their success.

After taking Davis D. Joyce’s course in Oklahoma history, a student once said, “I saw an Oklahoma I’d never seen before.”

“This is a splendid collection of writings in the true spirit of a ‘people’s history’. It begins with a delightful, wry overlook at Oklahoma by George Milburn, and goes on to tell about the state in way rarely seen in traditional histories. There are accounts of progressivism, of socialism, of labor radicalism, of Indian resistance, of black struggle against segregation, of women’s campaigns for abortion rights. It includes fascinating portraits of people, some famous, some obscure, who were engaged in these struggles. I hope this become a model for similar volumes on other states.”–Howard Zinn, author of People’s History of the United States.

Contents: “Oklahoma,” George Milburn; “The Difficulty of Celebrating an Invasion, “Jerald C. Walker;“Progressivism in Oklahoma Politics, 1900-1913: A Reinterpretation,” Kenny L. Brown;“Kate Barnard, Progressivism, and the West,” Suzanne J. Crawford and Lynn R. Musslewhite; “’In Death You Shall not Wear It Either’: The Persecution of Mennonite Pacifists in Oklahoma,” Marvin E. Kroeker;“She Never Weakened: The Heroism of Freda Ameringer,” John Thompson; “Wobblies in the Oilfields: The Suppression of the Industrial Workers of the World in Oklahoma,” Nigel sellars; “The Road Once Taken: Socialist Medicine in Southwestern Oklahoma,” Alana Hughes;  “Woody Guthrie: The Oklahoma Years, 1912-1929,” Harry Menig;  “The  New Deal Comes to Shawnee,” Dale E.Soden; “The Social Gospel of Nicholas Comfort,” Bob Cottrell; “Behold the Walls,” Clara Luper;  “The Case of  the Deerslayer,”  Stan Steiner; “Black Oklahoma and Sense of place ,” Jimmie L. Franklin; “The Southern Influence on Oklahoma ,” Danney Goble; “The Creation of an Oklahoma Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights: A Presonal/Historical Essay” Carole Jane Joyce; “Violence and Oppression of Women in Rural Oklahoma,”  Elizabeth D. Barlow; “Oklahoma’s Gay Liberation Movement,” Thomas E. Guild, Joan Luxenburg, and Keith Smith; “Even Among the Sooners, There Are More Important Things than Football,” Alan Ehrenhalt.

In revealing an Oklahoma many have never seen, this book can remind Oklahoma citizens of changes yet to be made, show how to mark them, and (perhaps most important of all) inspire them to do the job.

Why was Oklahoma, of all places, more hospitable to socialism than any other state in America? In this provocative book, Jim Bissett chronicles the rise and fall of the Socialist Party of Oklahoma during the first two decades of the twentieth century, when socialism in the United States enjoyed its golden age.

To explain socialism’s popularity in Oklahoma, Bissett looks back to the state’s strong tradition of agrarian reform. Drawing most of its support from working farmers, the Socialist Party of Oklahoma was rooted in such well-established organizations as the Farmers Alliance and the Indiahoma Farmers’ Union. And to broaden its appeal, the Party borrowed from the ideology both of the American Revolution and of Christianity. By making Marxism speak in American terms, the author argues, Party activists counteracted the prevailing notion that socialism was illegitimate or un-American.