Great Oklahoma Swindle

Board of Directors Award for special merit, 2021 Oklahoma Book Awards 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. In a century, Oklahoma gave birth to movements for an African American homeland, a vibrant Socialist Party, and armed rebellions of radical farmers. 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—the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921—a statewide takeover by the Ku Klux Klan, and the rise of a paranoid far-right agenda by a fundamentalist preacher, and you have the recipe for America’s most paradoxical state. In The Great Oklahoma Swindle Russell Cobb tells the story of a state rich in natural resources and artistic talent, yet near the bottom in education and social welfare. Raised in Tulsa, Cobb engages Oklahomans across race and class to elucidate their contradictory and often stridently independent attitudes. Interweaving memoir, social commentary, and sometimes surprising research around race, religion, and politics, Cobb presents an insightful portrait that will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about the American Heartland.