Oklahoma Books

The book written by Dr. Quirke (Egyptian Curator at the British Museum, London) and illustrated by Mr. Forman (Photographer) is most recommendable. With a clear and concise style, the former introduces to us the historical evolution of the traditional religious literature of Ancient Egypt, i.e., the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts and Book of the Dead, not only focusing on the "historical" process but also in the evolution of the contents and the mental horizon expressed therein. There are excellent editions and translations of all of the aforesaid "Egyptian books", but very few in which the connection between the three of them can be traced so neatly as in this one. The superb color plates of the second co-author are an actual mine of visual information on monuments for which much has been written but less has been shown. Most recommended for students of ancient Egyptian religion and writing!!

One pulls for first one man and then the other in this engaging book. Who will she end up with and why? Besides being a mystery involving expensive Lakewood art pottery, one isn't sure who is the bad guy. Romantic scenes are the stuff of fantasy come to life. The plot sweeps you right along as you learn about academic politics in a university and art pottery auctions. The author certainly knows her stuff!

A masterpiece written by the well known historian, Dr. Arthur L. Campa. The most accurate account of Hispanic Culture and historical events ever written! Highly recommended!

If you're looking for a way to celebrate Oklahoma's upcoming centennial, want to get a little more familiar with Oklahoma City history, or are curious about those notorious street jogs in the downtown area, then pick up a copy of this book and feast on a collection of photographs ranging from the Land Run of 1889 through the postwar era and beyond.

The book views the birth of Oklahoma City through the lens of a camera. The result of countless hours of research, it features a collection of historic black and white photographs recording moments in time that shaped the development of the capitol city.

Some highlights:
* Two townsite companies feuded over accurately surveying the townsite, resulting in strangely aligned streets
* Treeless fields filled with tents, horses and cattle
* An early photo of a May, 1896 tornado, described as a "twisting serpent-like cloud
* Horse racing at the first state fair in 1907
* Charlton Heston participating in a civil rights march

Many people like looking at old photographs of buildings and landscapes, but my favorite shots are of people, like the one of the conductor on page 79, poised on the steps of a trolley. He's grinning from ear to ear. What was his name? How did he get to Oklahoma? Where did he live? What was his story? Such is the power of a photograph.

Full of tips and details only somone who has been there could know. Refreshing, insightful and fun.

Dan Poynter, Author, The Self-Publishing Manual.

Great book for the research I'm doing for an historical novel. It gives information about the terrain, plant life, stage and train routes, mines and military reserves.

The product arrived in perfect condition, and promptly.

(I'm reviewing the 4th Edition Hardcover) This atlas maps and details an astonishing number of facts about Oklahoma. There's something for everyone: political (e.g. "Constitutional Convention Delegate Districts, 1906" , geologilcal ("Geologic Formations), biological ("Buffalo Country"), military ("Civil War Battlesites, 1861-1865"), and this sampling barely scratches the surface: my use of the word 'astonishing' wasn't mere hyperbole. Each subject has about a page's worth of explanatory text and maps of excellent quality. One of the strongest themes in the book involves the indian populations of the state: there are numerous pages, from "Early Arrivals, 40,000-12,000 BC"/"Early Big-Game Hunters, 12,000-8,000 BC" to the "Proposed State of Sequoyah, 1905", with meticulous maps of the various indian territories in-between, as they were created and modified over the years. This is a great book for any Oklahoman: The authors, and OU Press, have done a very fine job.

Many people think of autograph collecting only in terms of writing fan letters to movie stars, but the fact is, the hobby offers an opportunity to hold history in your hands.

Owning a letter you know was written by an historical figure you admire -- when it is Abrham Lincoln, or Judy Garland -- is an incredible experience. But it is a hobby which should not be embarked upon without doing your homework.

This book is an excellent place to start. Starting with general information on what, where and how to collect, Rendell then examines collecting specialties from such as the American West, Presidents, WWII, Music, Science, etc. He gives specific and detailed information which will help you understand autographs and avoid buying fakes.

It contains hundreds of signature facsimiles, which are extremely important for comparison purposes.

Rendell is one of the most respected autograph dealers in the country and manages to be interesting as well as informative.

This is a "must have" book for any serious autograph collector.

"The Osage" corresponds roughly to Osage County in North central Oklahoma. This is tall-grass prairie of rare quality, mile after mile of vast open spaces, top-notch pasture land, and dotted with more oil wells than dwellings. Ted Turner has a new ranch in the Osage with the largest buffalo herd in the U.S. -- about 7,500 head -- and the Nature Conservancy owns the 45,000 acre Tallgrass Prairie preserve with 2,500 buffalo.

The Osage Indians leased much of the Osage to White ranchers in the early 20th century and the author tells the story of these leases and ranches. Most of the book consists of brief bios and a catalog of the principal ranches and ranchers in the Osage -- some of which have survived to the present day. There are lots of early-day pictures and maps of leases, a bibliography, and an index of more than a thousand names mentioned in the text.

For the genealogists, the Western or Oklahoma historian this is an attractive, interesting large format, hardbook book of local history about a unique and beautiful region. You can buy it at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve north of the town of Pawhuska.

Smallchief

Forget all the traditional, "standard" histories of Barbarossa you've ever read -- the ones which simply repeat the same tired reasons why Germany lost, ad infinitum and ad nauseum. R.H.S. Stolfi has written a work which presents a completely new view of Barbarossa, and the real possibilities of the German Army to win the European-wide war in 1941.

Basically what Stolfi contends is that the Germans had the force and the battle-winning tactics to defeat the Soviet Union, if only they'd done things alittle differently. Stolfi puts the spotlight on Hitler's decision, made during August, 1941, to divert the bulk of Army Group Center's panzers south into the Ukraine, instead of resuming the offensive on Moscow. Such a decision, which was severely contested by many of his generals, both in the Army High Command (OKH) and in the field forces, lost the Germans the initiative, gave the Soviets a breathing space of 3+ months to recover in front of Moscow, and threw away the best chance the Germans had of defeating the USSR.

Stolfi maintains that an uninterrupted drive on Moscow would have taken that city by the end of August. The facts he presents to bolster this view are, from what I can see even from his fiercest critics, beyond question. Stolfi points out that, by mid-July with the seizure of Smolensk (July 15th) and the bottling up of another vast host of Soviet forces west of that city, the Soviets had lost eight of the nine field armies within their Western Special Military District (which roughly corresponded to German Army Group Center's area of operation), and had relatively meager forces organized to meet the German onslaught. Stolfi estimates the total Soviet strength at about 35 divisions (only 22 of which where complete -- the rest being bits and pieces of other units, many already badly "roughed up" by the German attack). Against this weak force, Army Group Center could deploy all 55 units they began the campaign with (and at almost their authorized strengths -- so light had been German losses at that point), along with 3 to 5 divisions from their general reserve which von Bock wanted to throw in. That this force would have disposed of the remaining Soviet forces before Moscow is not in doubt. And based on proven German capabilities up to that point, Stolfi estimates it would have taken only three weeks to close the pincers on Moscow and seize that city (with alittle longer to destroy the trapped Russian forces in the pocket west of Moscow).

Some critics of Stolfi, unable to dispute this, have still gone back to the tired old refrain of "vast reserves" that somehow would have rallied to stop the Germans east of Moscow, and even suggest the German occupation of that city might have been short-lived. The problem with that argument is that, at the time of Stolfi's projected attack, almost no reserves had been built up in the area east-northeast of Moscow (what Stolfi terms the "Moscow-Gorki Mobilization Space")! By late July the Soviets were pouring all reserves into the region WEST of Moscow in a last-ditch attempt to protect the capital. Once the Soviet command realized the Germans weren't going to make that last 350 km "pounce" on Moscow immediately, and instead had directed much of their forces south into the Ukraine, did they start building up a reserve north-northeast of Moscow. And the fact is that it took them from August to early December to assemble an force of roughly 15 field armies (each field army being roughly equivalent to a German corps) from which to launch a counter-offensive on December 5th, after the German's Operation Typhoon had petered out. Stolfi's contention is that such a hypothetical German advance through Moscow and perhaps as far east as Gorki would have completely STILLBORN Russian attempts to utilize their "vast reserves". Not only would the physical areas for concentration have been denied the Russians, but most of the population centers from which the reservists and conscripts came from (especially Moscow, the largest city in the USSR) would have been in German hands.

Contrary to some critics, Stolfi doesn't conclude the Germans WOULD have won the Russo-German war had they followed this course, only that they would have given themselves the best opportunity to win. Whether the Germans could have successfully followed-up the seizure of the Western Special Military District is, of course, open to argument. But what Stolfi demolishes is any notion that the Soviets were "preordained" to win, whatever the Germans did. In fact, "Hitlers Panzers East" succeeds in demolishing quite a few long-held myths. Stolfi analyzes the campaign from every conceivable angle, and supports his conclusions with a mountain of evidence. He proves that, in no way did the Germans "underestimate" the rigors of a campaign against the vast USSR. Nor did they overlook the vast forces the Soviets COULD bring to bear in a longer war; in fact, the German generals valued speed above everything. They knew that the Soviets were too strong to be allowed any respite. And the central theme of Stolfi's book is that the Germans were, by late July, on a pace to deny the one thing the Soviets needed above all -- time!

Stolfi emphasizes that under the lighting war the Germans were waging, the Soviets simply couldn't "trade space for time", at least in the Western Special Military District. In less than a month Army Group Center had advanced 400 miles from the pre-war frontier, fought and won three great battles of encirclement, and seized the all-important "Smolensk Land Bridge" between the Dvina and Dniepr Rivers. This was a pace which the Red Army simply couldn't cope with. They had seen 8 of 9 field armies virtually destroyed, and the Germans hadn't even been seriously delayed. No amount of un-utilized "vast reserves" was going to halt this juggernaut.

The Soviet Union was, by late July, in "extremis". They had lost most of their pre-war field armies, and a tremendous amount of real estate, to the rampaging Germans. Both panic and defeatism were beginning to set in, not only on the front lines, but in Moscow itself. I believe all the talk of huge reserves still available to the Soviets stemmed from Stalin's efforts to curb such panic and defeatism. Same can be said of the impossibly high estimates of such reserves that have come to light in Russian archives since Stolfi wrote his book in 1993. Such round figures of 8, 10, or even 12 million are hardly credible; they give no explanatory detail of who and where these "reserves" were located, nor do they even provide citations of where the information is coming from. And, fact is, they simply don't jibe with pre-war figures of Soviet reserves (which themselves were inflated for propaganda purposes). I can only regard such "evidence" as highly suspicious. That the Soviets had the need to propagandize, both during and after the war, and the ability to do so, is obvious. Stalin and his Communist regime could never admit to how badly they were being defeated.

Stolfi points out that the loss of the Greater Moscow area alone would have been a devastating blow, both psychologically and materially. Moscow was the biggest population center and industrial base of the nation. It was the very hub of all European Russian transportation and communications systems. And it was the seat of government and the military high command. One can only imagine how effective Stalin and his generals would have been in continuing the war while on the run, perhaps to the Urals. Or how effective the hold of the party apparatus and Red Guards would have been on those areas still unconquered by German arms.

This brings up the very real possibility, which Stolfi analyzes, that Stalin's regime could not have survived the fall of Moscow. While this is certainly open to argument, there's no doubt the loss of his capital and all the functions of government and party would have weakened his grip on Russia. Stalin's murderous, repressive regime was not particularly popular, and nothing would have showed the Russian people his vulnerability than the loss of the capital, on top of Germany's other rapid gains. One can't help wondering if anti-Stalin forces might have taken advantage of the situation, rushing in to "fill the power vacuum" and set up a provisional government -- exactly what happened in April, 1917 when Kerensky's socialists took power from the Tsar during the First World War. And might not this provisional government have been as anxious to end the war, whatever the harsh conditions, as did Lenin's Bolsheviks when they in turn took over in October, 1917? Just a year before, in July of 1940 a provisional French government under Marshal Petain had done likewise. Certainly the possibility exists of a "rump" Russian state east of the Urals being created, while Hitler took the whole of European Russia. True, Stalin and his die-hards could've tried continuing the war somewhere in the Urals, but this would have been of little consequence to the mighty, victorious German Army.

The capture of Moscow and much of the Western Special Military District (perhaps even to the Volga) would have freed up the bulk of Army Group Center (particularly Guderian and Hoth's powerful Panzergruppes) for operations radiating both North and South. The Soviets still had strong forces on the Ukrainian and Leningrad fronts, but the taking of the Central swath of Russia would have strategically flanked these areas, besides insuring they received no reinforcements and supplies from that direction. True, the further one moves away from actual history, the more conjectural becomes the case. But I agree with Stolfi that competent generals like Halter, von Bock, and von Rundstedt, urged along by ultra-decisive ones like Guderian and Hoth, would have moved strong elements of Army Group Center both north and south, right into the rear of the Soviet armies holding out along those positions. Not only would such a move cut many of the remaining supply lines from the east, but would have placed the Soviet Ukrainian and Leningrad forces in the nightmarish situation of trying to fight on their original fronts (against the still powerful Army Groups North and South), and on REVERSED fronts as well! Any military strategist worth his salt will confirm that this situation would have led to disaster and the ultimate destruction of these Soviet field armies.

With the defeat of these last real "professional" Soviet armies from the pre-war days, the situation of the Soviet Union would have been pretty hopeless. The only real weak-point of Stolfi's thesis is his belief that the war would have been largely over by the end of 1941, and operations in 1942 would have been merely of a "mopping up" nature. Barring the complete ouster of Stalin and his communists, I believe the Germans would still have had some large-scale campaigns to conduct, and some tough fighting ahead, especially in the eastern Ukraine. But, even with a large pool of manpower to draw from, what real chances would the Soviets of had by then?

True, they still could have raised large armies in the east, but the "raw materials" to make up these forces would have been so vastly inferior as to doubt their utility. With almost all of their veteran, front-line troops now gone, as well as much of their first-rate reservists, the Russians would have been in deep trouble. Older reservists, home guard-types, and green conscripts simply cannot be whipped into effective armies on the fly -- the Soviets would have needed a good amount of time to craft this sort of "raw material" into anything approaching a good army (not even to mention the problem of properly equipping such forces, with most of the industrial base of the country captured and most of the ports through which Allied aid could flow seized by German arms). Again, as Stolfi hammers home -- the Germans were not about to give the remaining Soviets that time.

To gauge what chances these new "conscript" armies raised in the Urals and eastern Ukraine might have of surviving, let alone turning the tide of the war, one has only to look back at similiar situations in history. Though doubtless many might come to mind to military history buffs, the one that leaps to my mind is that of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Lest we forget, the two principal field armies of Imperial France were lost in 1870 -- one defeated at Sedan in August, the other surrendered at Metz in October -- and Napoleon III's Empire fell to a provisional republican government. France did manage to continue the war, and even succeeded in raising large "armies" of old reservists and green levees, but with only a smattering of quality troops. Unfortunately, the military record of these large, improvised "armies" is absolutely wretched. All the elan of the French people to continue resistance against the hated Prussian Army didn't help these hapless republican armies when they went up against the professional, battle-tested Prussians. Hemmed in at beseiged Paris, and trying to hold a long line south of that city, the Republican armies were too inept to sustain any offensive operations to break out of Paris or relieve it from without. Then when the Prussians attacked their lines, they folded like a house-of-cards. Disaster followed upon disaster, and the French government finally had to wake up to reality, suing for peace. The cold fact of the matter was that once their first-rate professional army was lost, the French were just living on borrowed time. Enthusiasm for the cause among millions of Frenchmen didn't translate into effective armies capable of taking on the vaunted Prussians. The French would have needed much time to recoup, and that's one thing the Prussians were not going to give them.

The analogy of the French in 1871 to that of the Soviets trying to create new "armies" of largely untrained and ill-equipped men in the Urals and east Ukraine is simply too obvious. I am convinced Hitler's army would have made as short a work of such "armies" as von Moltke's did of the French in 1871. Again, as Stolfi points out, vast manpower is only useful if one is given the time to utilize it. The German's superior war-fighting tactics and ability was proven again and again during the Barbarossa Summer. The essence of the blitzkrieg was speed, and denying the enemy the time to recover. Without time, even a colossus like the Soviet Union could not keep absorbing the kind of losses of first-rate troops they were experiencing on all fronts -- losses in killed,wounded, and captured that had reached over 2 million by late August.

As Stolfi rightly contends, the German offensive was of such overwhelming speed, scope, breadth, and violence that the Soviets simply were not in control of events by late July/early August. Their only salvation was the sort of "unforced error" that Hitler made in changing the focus of the attack south into the Ukraine. R.H.S. Stolfi has given us a new interpretation of the Barbarossa Summer, and with it, of World War II. He has done a masterful job of marshaling his facts and laying down his arguments. He presents much evidence to support his thesis, and does a credible job of demolishing the tired old rehashes of both both Western and Soviet sources since the end of World War II on why the Soviets won. It wasn't "vast Soviet resources", or German "underestimation of the rigors of the campaign" or even "the harsh Russian winter" which defeated the German Army, but Adolf Hitler's meddling in military strategy which should have been left to his very competent generals. After reading "Hitlers Panzers East", I think you'll agree that all the previous volumes on the subject will ring very hollow, indeed!