The well-known ""people's politician"" recalls his life and careerOne of Oklahoma's most famous native sons, Fred Harris faced life's challenges with the same resolve as a favorite uncle: ""Does people do it? If people does it, I can do it."" In this engaging memoir, he describes how he met those challenges head-on. A child of the Great Depression, Harris grew up in the small town of Walters, Oklahoma, where he was born in a two-room house. He describes that upbringing and his initiation into state politics, and tells how he was elected to the U.S. Senate at the age of thirty-three. As he recounts his experiences in national politics, he yields an insightful look at the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. Earning a reputation as a ""new populist,"" Harris chaired the national Democratic Party and was a serious presidential candidate. Along the way, he encountered such giants as Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and Robert F. Kennedy. Enlivening his account with firsthand conversations, Harris contributes to our understanding of the motivations and personalities of these figures - including the infamous tensions between Johnson and Kennedy. Despite rubbing elbows with such power brokers, Harris maintained his own reputation as a down-to-earth man of the people whose advocacy included American Indian causes. Harris accomplished much in his distinguished career, championing human rights at home and around the world. His masterfully written memoir attests to a philosophical consistency and humane liberalism that today are all too rare.

Okemah, Oklahoma, where Woody Guthrie once lived and wrote songs, was fighting for its existence in the late 1920s and early 1930s as the oil boom ended, cotton fell to ten cents a pound, and Prohibition was in force. Yet this grim scenario frames Robert Rutland's colorful remembrance of a youth filled with adventure, characters, curiosity, and love. Here is the true story of a little boy who found life full of excitement, wonder, and joy in a small town on the southern plains.

One of Oklahoma's most famous native sons, Fred Harris faced life's challenges with the same resolve as a favorite uncle: "Does people do it? If people does it, I can do it." In this engaging memoir, he describes how he met those challenges head-on. A child of the Great Depression, Harris grew up in the small town of Walters, Oklahoma, where he was born in a two-room house. He describes that upbringing and his initiation into state politics, and tells how he was elected to the U.S. Senate at the age of thirty-three. As he recounts his experiences in national politics, he yields an insightful look at the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. Earning a reputation as a "new populist," Harris chaired the national Democratic Party and was a serious presidential candidate. Along the way, he encountered such giants as Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and Robert F. Kennedy. Enlivening his account with firsthand conversations, Harris contributes to our understanding of the motivations and personalities of these figures-including the infamous tensions between Johnson and Kennedy. Despite rubbing elbows with such power brokers, Harris maintained his own reputation as a down-to-earth man of the people whose advocacy included American Indian causes. Harris accomplished much in his distinguished career, championing human rights at home and around the world. His masterfully written memoir attests to a philosophical consistency and humane liberalism that today are all too rare.

"Contrarian Sooner views of Oklahoma history"

How many of us really know every side to Oklahoma's past and present?

In this companion to his previous volume, ""An Oklahoma I Had Never Seen Before,"" Davis D. Joyce presents fourteen essays that interpret Oklahoma's unique populist past and address current political and social issues. Joyce invited scholars and political activists to speak their minds on subjects ranging from gender, race, and religion to popular music, the energy industry, and economics.

These decidedly contrarian Sooner voices reflect the progressive, libertarian, and even radical viewpoints that influenced the state's creation. Contributors talk of growing up "Okie and radical," of the legacy of Woody Guthrie in the Red Dirt music scene, and of the Sunbelt Alliance that helped to stop the building of the Black Fox nuclear power plant. They look back at Oklahoma City's role in the early civil rights sit-in movement and at an Oklahoman's experience with Vietnam Veterans Against the War. They consider religion outside the mainstream--and everyday women squarely within these unique expressions of faith.

In assembling these engaging essays about Oklahoma and its past, Joyce calls on the alternative approach to history championed by Howard Zinn and also invokes Oklahoman Paul Harvey in offering us "the rest of the story."

"Alternative Oklahoma" urges an honest alternative exploration of the state's diverse past. It's an Oklahoma history that takes into account the overlooked and the left behind and contributes to a more open political dialogue in a state too often dismissed as unquestionably "red."