The Wind Is My Mother: The Life and Teachings of a Native American Shaman
by Bear Heart
from Berkley Trade
With eloquent simplicity, Bear Heart, a full-blooded and traditionally trained healer of the Muskogee Creek tribe, shares a lifetime of training. In sections titled "The Cure Lies Within You" and "Learning How To Live," Bear Heart weaves together anecdotes and philosophy to show how traditional tribal wisdom can help us maintain mental, spiritual and physical health in today's world. We journey with him from his initiation into the Muskogee Creek's "medicine ways" in 1938 (when he walked unharmed through a den of rattlesnakes) to his role as a respected elder and counselor whose gentle words spring from a lifetime of service. He describes the lessons learned in ceremonies conducted in the sweat lodge and the Native American Church; he explains why Native people pray with peyote and smoke the Sacred Pipe and how vision quests can bring clarity and personal revelation. Throughout, Bear Heart's teachings stress the importance of self-knowledge, integrity, and being open to the guidance of the Great Spirit. Through inspiring stories and examples, he teaches us how to live.
African Cherokees in Indian Territory: From Chattel to Citizens (John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture)
by Celia E. Naylor
from The University of North Carolina Press
Forcibly removed from their homes in the late 1830s, Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Indians brought their African-descended slaves with them along the Trail of Tears and resettled in Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma. Celia E. Naylor vividly charts the experiences of enslaved and free African Cherokees from the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma's entry into the Union in 1907. Carefully extracting the voices of former slaves from interviews and mining a range of sources in Oklahoma, she creates an engaging narrative of the composite lives of African Cherokees. Naylor explores how slaves connected with Indian communities not only through Indian customs—language, clothing, and food—but also through bonds of kinship.
Examining this intricate and emotionally charged history, Naylor demonstrates that the "red over black" relationship was no more benign than "white over black." She presents new angles to traditional understandings of slave resistance and counters previous romanticized ideas of slavery in the Cherokee Nation. She also challenges contemporary racial and cultural conceptions of African-descended people in the United States. Naylor reveals how black Cherokee identities evolved reflecting complex notions about race, culture, "blood," kinship, and nationality. Indeed, Cherokee freedpeople's struggle for recognition and equal rights that began in the nineteenth century continues even today in Oklahoma.
Funny Money
by Mark Singer
from Mariner Books
From esteemed New Yorker writer Mark Singer comes this cautionary tale of the Penn Square Bank, the oil and gas broker in an Oklahoma City shopping mall whose collapse in 1982 staggered America's banking industry. Recounting the whole spectacular story and its colorful characters, Singer makes brilliantly (and hilariously) clear what actually happened and why it had to happen in boom-time Oklahoma. Nowhere else did money flow in quite the same spontaneous fashion. "[A] tale of wonderful verve" (New York Times), Funny Money comes to life through Singer's vivid prose and continues to resonate in today's culture of corporate corruption.
The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
by Tim Madigan
from St. Martin's Griffin
And now, 80 years later, the death toll of what is known as the Tulsa Race Riot is more difficult to pinpoint. Conservative estimates put the number of dead at about 100 (75% of the victims are believed to have been black), but the actual number of casualties could be triple that. The Tulsa Race Riot Commission, formed two years ago to determine exactly what happened, has recommended that restitution to the historic Greenwood Community would be good public policy and do much to repair the emotional as well as physical scars of this most terrible incident in our shared past.
With chilling details, humanity, and the narrative thrust of compelling fiction, The Burning will recreate the town of Greenwood at the height of its prosperity, explore the currents of hatred, racism, and mistrust between its black residents and neighboring Tulsa's white population, narrate events leading up to and including Greenwood's annihilation, and document the subsequent silence that surrounded the tragedy.
John Wesley Hardin: Dark Angel of Texas
by Leon Claire Metz
from University of Oklahoma Press
The Tri-State Terror: The Life and Crimes of Wilbur Underhill
by R. D. Morgan
from New Forums Press
Wilbur Underhill—the "Tri-State Terror"—is the Boogeyman of Depression-era outlaws in more ways than one. For nearly a decade in the turbulent period of the 1920s and 30s, he was one of the most infamous and feared criminals in the Southwest. Convicted of one of his murders in Oklahoma he was sentenced to life and escaped, killing a cop and receiving another life term in Kansas, and then escaped again, leading ten others in a mass breakout. In the last months of his life, he rose to national notoriety as a prolific bank robber and suspect in the infamous Kansas City Massacre and became the first criminal ever shot down by agents of that fledgling agency which would soon become the FBI.
True criminal immortality seemed to elude Wilbur after his death, his name eclipsed in the national headlines by the likes of John Dillinger, "Pretty Boy" Floyd, and "Baby Face" Nelson. But scratch the surface and he's still there.
-- From his native Joplin where Underhill began his career modestly as a "lovers lane" bandit,
-- to the Tri-State mining district where he is best remembered as a lone wolf scurrying about the night terrorizing the populace and committing a half-dozen robberies at gunpoint,
-- to Wichita, Kansas where he was known as a vicious cop-killer,
-- to Jeff City, Lansing, and McAlester where he became a legendary figure among the inmate populations and seemingly possessed a talent to break out at will,
-- to the Central Oklahoma oilfields and his hideouts in the wild and wooly Cookson Hills,
-- to the many towns he struck in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arkansas his impact is still felt.
Underhill emerges from the shadows at last in this work, thanks to the tireless research of R.D. Morgan. The Tri State Terror is a natural follow-up to Morgan's previous works (especially Bad Boys of the Cookson Hills) but easily stands on its own as the definitive biography of a long lost superstar of thirties crime whose position in the criminal constellation is reaffirmed.
Staring at Sound: The True Story of Oklahoma's Fabulous Flaming Lips
by Jim Derogatis
from Broadway
An engrossing and intimate portrait of the Oklahoma-based psychedelic pop band the Flaming Lips, cult heroes to millions of indie-rock fans.
In July 2002, the Flaming Lips released an ambitious album called Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, which merged elements of orchestral pop, electronic dance music, and old-fashioned psychedelic rock with lyrical themes that were simultaneously poignant and philosophical and supremely silly. The album sold a million copies worldwide, introduced the Flaming Lips to a mass audience, and made them one of the best-known cult bands in rock history.
Staring at Sound is the tale of the Flaming Lips’s fascinating career (which, in reality, began in 1983) and the many colorful personalities in their orbit, especially Wayne Coyne, their charismatic and visionary founder. Based on hundreds of hours of interviews with the band, it follows the Flaming Lips through the thriving indie-rock underground of the 1980s and the alternative-rock movement of the early ’90s, during which they found fans in such rock legends as Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Robert Plant, and Devo, and respected peers in such acts as the White Stripes, Radiohead, and Beck. It concludes with exclusive coverage of the creation of the group’s latest album, At War with the Mystics.
Echoes of Oklahoma Football: The Greatest Stories Ever Told
from Triumph Books
With a proud tradition dating back to 1895, a worldwide following of rabid and devoted fans, and an ever-growing collection of national championships, Oklahoma Sooners football is one of the truly elite programs in collegiate sports. Echoes of Oklahoma Sooners Football documents that history through some of the greatest sportswriting of the past century. Relive the excitement of the games and traditions and revisit the players and coaches that have made the Oklahoma Sooners synonymous with college football excellence.
Oklahoma: A History of Five Centuries
by Arrell Morgan Gibson
from University of Oklahoma Press
The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories
by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
from Regnery Publishing
These days, it seems like everyone's a Friend of Bill--Clinton's buddies from Arkansas are turning up in powerful White House positions faster than you can say "Whitewater." But make no mistake, British journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is no F.O.B.: in the course of The Secret Life of Bill Clinton's 350-plus pages, he manages to connect the president to everything from 1997's Oklahoma City bombing to Arkansas's drug underworld to the mysterious death of White House aide and longtime Clinton friend Vince Foster, and, of course, to Paula Jones. According to Evans-Pritchard--who has reported for the London-based Spectator, Sunday Telegraph (where he served as Washington bureau chief), and Daily Telegraph newspapers--Clinton's "original sin" was the Waco incident, the FBI's much-criticized assault on the Branch Davidian community in Texas that led to the deaths of 76 people. From that point on, the author asserts, it was all downhill for the American people.
Evans-Pritchard's exposé of Arkansas's favorite son is indeed scathing: he documents the then-governor's drug use and consort with prostitutes (primarily in the company of ne'er-do-well brother Roger); innumerable lies to friends, staff members, and the people who empowered him; numerous infidelities; blackmail--the list goes on and on. Evans-Pritchard claims that, because he is not an American citizen, he is not "beholden to any political or financial interest in the United States," and he does not "hang on lips of official sources," nor does he "fear the loss of access in Washington, or the blackball of [his] profession"; in other words, he ain't afraid to call 'em like he sees 'em. And although many of his seemingly wild claims and accusations are substantiated by thorough notes and appendixes following the text (including copies of original FBI documents), you're never quite convinced of the author's theories. Whether or not you come to believe, as Evans-Pritchard does, that "Arkansas was a mini-Colombia within the United States, infested by narco-corruption"; that--because of William Jefferson Clinton--"you can sniff the pungent odors of decay in the American body politic"; that the president's "actions and character ... have engendered the most deadly terrorist movement in the industrialized world," you will most certainly be entertained and enlightened by the dirt this British muckraker has uncovered. You may not be an F.O.B., but after reading this book, you may not mind so much.
An illustrious investigative reporter adds shocking new and exclusive revelations to his swelling bag of Clinton scandals.
+++
