Boom Town
"Award-winning journalist Sam Anderson's long-awaited debut is a brilliant, kaleidoscopic narrative of Oklahoma City--a great American story of civics, basketball, and destiny. Oklahoma City was born from chaos. It was founded in the bizarre but momentous Land Run of 1889, when tens of thousands of people lined up along the borders of Oklahoma Territory and rushed in at noon to stake their claims. Since then, it has been a city torn between the wild energy that drives its outsize ambitions and the forces of order that seek sustainable progress. Nowhere was this dynamic better realized than in the drama of the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team's 2012-13 season, when the Thunder's brilliant general manager, Sam Presti, ignited a firestorm by trading future superstar James Harden just days before the first game. Presti's all-in gamble on the "Process"--the patient, methodical management style that framed the trade as the team's best hope for long-term greatness--kicked off a pivota l year in the city's history, one that would include pitched battles over urban planning, a series of cataclysmic tornadoes, and the frenzied hope that an NBA championship might finally deliver the glory of which the city had always dreamed. Boom Town announces the arrival of an exciting literary voice.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
3mentions
3people
2019–2026years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Boom Town by Sam Anderson. Its an intertwined history of Oklahoma City and its basketball team, the Thunder. I'm about halfway through, and I'm loving it so far.
- I read 57 books this year, a mix between fiction and non-fiction
Top 5 fiction
- A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
- Trust by Hernan Diaz
- City of Thieves by David Benioff
- Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
- Widow Basquiat by by Jennifer Clement
Top 5 non-fiction
- Boom Town by Sam Anderson
- The Second Founding by Eric Foner
- The Club by Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson
- The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel by Douglas Brunt
- The Spy and the Traitor by Ben McIntyre
- Leisure Stuff:
Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga Of Oklahoma City, It's Chaotic Founding... by Sam Anderson
Midnight In Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham
Dune by Frank Herbert
The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (tried it this year and stopped, want to give it another go)
Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang (just finished Exhalation and I think it's great)
An Ursula K. Le Guin novel, have not picked one out yet
A book related to basketball (possibly Dream Team, but IDK yet)
Less Leisure Stuff:
Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform by John Pfaff
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
The End Of Policing by Alex S Vitale
Either Manufacturing Consent or Understanding Power by Chomsky
The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold
Work:
Code Complete 2 by Steve McConnell
The Web Application Hacker's Handbook: Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws by Dafydd Stuttard, Marcus Pinto
Finish Writing An Interpreter In Go by Thorsten Ball
If I can get through all of these, I will be very pleased. Throw in a book or two at recommendation from friends and I think I'm full for the year.
