Boom Town
Ratings6
Average rating4.2
You know a book has done a good job making a seemingly boring topic interesting when Wayne Coyne is the least interesting character in it. An unexpectedly fascinating biography of Oklahoma City and parallel history of the 2013 OKC Thunder season.
This is narrative non-fiction at its best. Anderson does such a wonderful job of painting the city and its people, and most notably their mentality, that I was completely immersed by the breadth and depth of this neglected city's culture and history. He has managed to make the city feel like a literary character.
I received a copy of this book free from the publisher for review.
I've never been to Oklahoma and I didn't even know OKC had an NBA team, so I was skeptical about the book that so many people had gushed about. But Anderson's artful weaving of sports and history proved a dramatic, exciting and heartbreaking storytelling device. Brought me to tears more than once.
Really liked it at first since the founding of the city, the quirkiness and the basketball excursions were fun to read. But halfway through it got bogged down, I felt (I am a European with no connection to Oklahoma whatsoever). I found all the stuff about that Flaming Lips singer and the Chamber guy buying land just too boring to come back to. In the end I decided it was best to mark this as DNF and move on.
One of the best popular history books I've ever read, intermingling the founding of Oklahoma City with the first few seasons of its beloved Thunder. Everything is here: the Land Run, the shady deals, unheralded civil rights leaders, tornadoes, the bombing, and...The Flaming Lips.
Anderson has a deft writing style. Any writer who makes me care about basketball has pulled of a feat. I can't wait to see what he publishes next.