The Great Oklahoma Swindle: Race, Religion, and Lies in America's Weirdest State

Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2020 University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE. 2020. Hardcover. Edition/Printing not stated. Book is tight, square, and unmarked. Book Condition: Fine. DJ: Very Good+; NOT Price Clipped ($32.95); light bumping to top of DJ; scrape on spine in center. Gray paper over boards with gray cloth overlay on the spine with bright red lettering on the spine. 249 pp 8vo. Look down as you buzz across America, and Oklahoma looks like another “flyover state.” A closer inspection, however, reveals one of the most tragic, fascinating, and unpredictable places in the United States. Over the span of a century, Oklahoma gave birth to movements for an African American homeland, a vibrant Socialist Party, armed rebellions of radical farmers, and an insurrection by a man called Crazy Snake. In the same era, the state saw numerous oil booms, one of which transformed the small town of Tulsa into the “oil capital of the world.” Add to the chaos one of the nation’s worst episodes of racial violence, a statewide takeover by the Ku Klux Klan, and the rise of a paranoid far-right agenda by a fundamentalist preacher named Billy James Hargis and you have the recipe for America’s most paradoxical state. Far from being a placid place in the heart of Flyover Country, Oklahoma has been a laboratory for all kinds of social, political, and artistic movements, producing a singular list of weirdos, geniuses, and villains. A clean very presentable copy.