These days, rural Oklahoma is the last place anybody would look for leftist revolutionaries, but in 1917 the area exploded into full-blown insurrection. The state's tenant farmers, many of whom were Socialist Party members, viewed the Great War in Europe as a conflict that benefited only the rich. When the federal government enacted a draft, an uprising in eastern Oklahoma saw local townspeople skirmishing with rebellious farmers, including whites, blacks, and American Indians. More than 250 men were arrested -- some sentenced for up to ten years' imprisonment.

This is the backdrop of William Cunningham's powerful novel "The Green Corn Rebellion." First published in 1935, it tells the story of Jim Tetley, who wants simply to be a good farmer -- if the banks will only let him. As Jim copes with poverty, family rivalries, and community tensions, he must also weigh the need to respond to the call for armed rebellion.

Although the insurrection itself succeeded only in undermining the socialist movement and fueling the Red Scare of the 1920s, Cunningham's incendiary writing has been compared to that of Erskine Caldwell. A uniquely American story with roots set deep in Oklahoma soil, "The Green Corn Rebellion" will attract all readers interested in the state's tumultuous history and in populist causes.

The Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, a radical labor union, played an important role in Oklahoma between the founding of the union in 1905 and its demise in 1930. In Oil, Wheat, & Wobblies, Nigel Anthony Sellars describes IWW efforts to organize migratory harvest hands and oil-field workers in the state and relationships between the union and other radical and labor groups such as the Socialist Party and the American Federation of Labor.

Focusing on the emergence of migratory labor and the nature of the work itself in industrializing the region, Sellars provides a social history of labor in the Oklahoma wheat belt and the mid-continent oil fields. Using court cases and legislation, he examines the role of state and federal government in suppressing the union during World War I.

Oil, Wheat, & Wobblies concludes with a description of the IWW revival and subsequent decline after the war, suggesting that the decline is attributable more to the union's failure to adapt to postwar technological change, its rigid attachment to outmoded tactics, and its internal policy disputes, than to political repression.