Oklahoma Books

Stumbled across this after reading many others about the people, period, and place which is why I was surprised at how lucid and interesting this book is. The author has worked beyond the obvious where most stop, done extensive and broad research, looked for historical context and setting, and surpassed most. Landon Jones's more recent biography on William Clark is similarly refreshing and riveting, if you enjoyed one you'll enjoy the other and be surprised at the differences. Shirley Christian's recent book on the Choteau fur trading dynasty, partners and pests of Clark's, "Before Lewis & Clark" is another one to seek out if you enjoyed this one.

"The Winds of Change on Croton Creek" is the warmest, most personal sort of recollection. It's a cherished memory more than nostalgia. It's generously intimate scrapbook, and a quilt work of personalities that tell the true life story of a girl born in 1917 in Roger Mills County, Oklahoma. These Oklahoma winds sweep up her family and carry them through some of the most interesting times in American history.

The story is so well written that it is almost impossible NOT to read the entire book in one setting. There is so much information in this story that there's something to rediscover in every reading. Clara King Davis' lush voice and journalistic narrative binds the vignettes of family life from the beginning on board the Mayflower to the present day.

It's easy to feel the warmth of a craftsman's gentle hand in these stories. It's all here - Oklahoma's rough and rowdy cowboy past, farm living, two world wars, politics, the Great Depression, the red scare, bumper crops, tornadoes, and the hardest of times, the Dust Bowl. This story is fresh because there is so much more than that here. This is the story of a family that joins together, survives and then overcomes even the harshest adversity.

That family continues to flourish in Oklahoma. In the forward, page xv, is a picture of two little girls on horseback. My grandmother is on the gray horse. Her cousin, and author of this book, Clara King Davis, is on the dark thoroughbred. The story of their adventures on horseback continues on page 124.

This book is a lot of fun to read. It is rare, but it is worth picking up a copy. You'll be glad you did.

I loved this book! Anyone that enjoys Jean Shepherd or Erma Bombeck should really enjoy this humorous look at raising a family in the 60's. This book kept me laughing from start to finish!

Wolf That I Am is both a lyrical account of a white mans struggle to understand American Indian culture and an intense personal journey of self-discovery and wisdom. The book recounts Fred McTaggart's experiences among the Fox tribe--Sac and Fox as they are commonly known--of Iowa in his attempt to collect and record folklore for his dissertation.

During this process, McTaggart slowly comes to the realization that Indian communities, due to a long history of all manner of abuse, are not always eager to become the object of academic study, regardless of the "good" intentions involved. Wolf That I Am should be standard reading for anyone planning research in American Indian communities or interested in American Indian studies in general.

Indeed, this book should be required reading for all Americans, many of whom continue to hold to fanciful idealizations, which not only dehumanize and demean the very people they purport to describe, but reinforces the Noble/Savage binary that has defined the relationship between Euro-Americans and Indians, which makes a free exchange of ideas all but impossible. As McTaggart shows, it is only through getting to know people of different cultures in an intimate and involved way that we can ever hope to truly understand and appreciate the great value of human cultural diversity. However, he could not achieve this subjectivity until he opened himself to the realities of American Indian life that is only attainable through a great deal of determination and care, which also allowed him to see the subtle prejudices with which he, and most Americans are raised.

While the path to understanding is often a difficult one, McTaggart demonstrates that such a holistic consciousness, free of heirarcical divisions and value judgement can be achieved if only we are willing to reassess our own beliefs. For as long one promotes in the self a willingness to open one's mind and heart to the sacred ways of others--in a way that grants their beliefs the respect and dignity that we would require for our own--the way to knowledge and wisdom will remain open to us.

If you liked Heckel's book "Marshals of Alexander", you will like this one too. Beth Carney writes good, short biographies of the important women that were around in Alexander's time. I might disagree on deatils with her view e.g. on Roxane, but this is a thorough, serious and especially very readable scholarly study. I have waited two years since its publication before I bought it. I wished I had not.

This is an excellent text for anyone who is interested in women's studies, the Depression Era, Native American Studies, and primary historical research. This book is also for anyone who desires a feeling of connection to the past. The voices captured by the interviews in this book show the reality of life in the early years of Indian Territory and Oklahoma. This book has the unique quality of exposing interviews of pioneering women and the issues they encountered.

With Workin' On The Railroad: Reminiscences From The Age Of Steam, Richard Reinhardt presents a compendium of firsthand accounts and stories of engineers, brakemen, porters, conductors, section men, round house workers, and many more of the oft-overlooked contributors to the construction of American railroads in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A seminal and informative primary source documenting the history of railroad construction with anecdotes and human experiences, Workin' On The Railroad is an enthusiastically recommended addition to personal and academic Railroad History reference collections.

(Bill Luvaas read as part of the Writer's Voice Visiting Author Series on November 16, 2007. This is my spoken introduction to the event...)

William Luvaas has an ability to present facts about characters that in lesser hands would come across as mere quirks, but within "A Working Man's Apocrypha," provide us with telling insight into each one. All the characters, no matter how briefly they appear within contribute something essential to the story, and Bill paints them fully, using vibrant, tactile, details, filling our senses in ways that most writers do not in the relatively smaller environs of the short story.

All over AWMA, Bill makes the natural world as much of a character as the people within; in "Original Sin" it's "Fog creeping up along empty streets, ambushing buildings..." action that directly reflects the emotional state of our protagonist. In "The Woman Who Was Allergic to Herself, it's "the wind was brutal this morning It decapitated waves and sent them skittering, throwing white spume in the air and leaves down in a steady rain..." How he makes the leaves there into water, mixing elements to better give us a sense of the physical moment here and elsewhere how things physically come apart, things, and people, too.

And he truly gets how profoundly connected people can be, how one's emotions are tied inextricably to their intimates, whether lovers, friends or family, how people joust, banter, joke and tease, pushing and pulling, claiming their space. In "The Sexual Revolution," he writes of twins, who share a preternaturally unusual bond, even for twins, Bill writes "How and Hol were like taut piano wires side by side; a vibration begun in one invariably translated to the other." I could make the rest of this introduction a scrolling of my favorites parts of this book, the original use of language, how Bill makes the characters colloquial, explicitly specific, yet never clichéd, how he uses phrases like "whumped it flat," describes the day-to-day difficulties of living as "life's pesterups," or a violent occurrence as taking place in "a few thick seconds," but we'd be here all night, as that covers exactly one page. Just know that the language never takes you further out, away from the heart of the story. It always-always--draws you further in.

Especially in the two stories that to me make up the heart of the collection, "The Woman Who Was Allergic to Herself" and the towering and devastating title story, (and frankly in all the stories), Bill is determined to grant each character their full humanity, their full dignity, even when their circumstances would make most of us turn away. And the joy in much of AWMA is watching each character gauge and reckon their own reactions; tentatively coming closer, pulling away, questioning their own motives, and finally, in most of the cases, making the inevitable, yet invariably brave step, to recognizing something of themselves in everyone, good and bad. And conversely, in so many of the stories, our main characters are returned a piece of themselves in startling and stunning ways, (sometimes even with a hammer upside the head), finally seeing things through new eyes, as we see them fresh and vivid in these brilliant, funny, heart-breaking stories...

J. Evetts Haley is a historian of the school that believed the facts of history were worthy of accurate historical narrative. This book is masterful: Haley laboriously documents the sources that he needed, some of them obscure and in dusty minutes, but the XIT ranch fills the Texas Panhandle's early history with a stirring and memorable quality seldom accorded modern history writing.
Haley's thesis is: The XIT history as told from original sources. Unlike most modern historians, who propound a thesis that is alien to the subject, Haley lets the materials of the XIT guide his writing. I heartily commend this book to the serious reader.
I learned why the XIT was named, the meaning of "Lobo" and a myraid of other interesting facts.
Longdrycreek Ranch, Shamrock, Texas

What a great book about one of our greatest National Parks. The major section consists of a series of 100 photographs presented in a Then & Now format: photos taken in the 1880's are compared with exact shots (same angle, location, etc.) taken roughly 100 years later. All of the photos depict various views of Yellowstone N.P. Comparisons are amazing: sometimes differences are subtle, other times very dramatic. (All are black & white.) It's amazing that the exact locations could be found, and the author declares that sometimes it was very difficult, requiring much detective work. The results are stunning. There are also chapters dealing with Yellowstone's geology, climate, vegetation, and the effect of human presence in the park. The book is truly monumental, worthy of its subject matter. Highly recommended.