Boom Goes the Book

Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World Class Metropolis by Sam Anderson is a platinum-level-must-read for American men (and hairy-chested American women) and when I list the topics, you'll understand why I make this claim-- and these manly topics are all woven together in a rocket-fueled tapestry of a narrative . . . a manly tapestry:

1) Oklahoma Thunder basketball during the Westbrook, Durant, Harden era and the post-Harden Reconstruction;

2) the Land Rush of 1889 . . . retitled by Anderson as either the "Chaos Explosion Apocalypse Town" or "Reckoning of the Doom Settlers: Clusterfuck on the Prairie;

3) the Sooners, who actually had the gall and wherewithal to cheat at the Doom Chaos Apocalypse Town Clusterfuck;

4) tornadoes, extreme weather, and the men and women that predict and chase these monstrous storms;

5) Clara Luper and the Oklahoma City Civil Rights movement;

6) city planning and the tension between top-down bureaucracy bottom-up up emergence;

7) enigmatic, experimental, anomalous and loyal native OklahomanWayne Coyne and his band The Flaming Lips;

8) domestic terrorism and a tragic explosion more devastating than the original formation of Oklahoma City;

and if there's nothing on this list that piques your interest, then I've got nothing much to say to you; this is the book of the year (and maybe the book of the last ten years . . . I loved it!)