Few writers have written as thoughtfully and extensively on Oklahoma politics and culture as Richard Lowitt. His work of the past six decades moves with ease among historical topics as various as agriculture, health, industry, labor, and the environment, offering an informed and enlightened perspective. Collected for the first time in one volume, Lowitt's articles on post-World War II Oklahoma and notable Oklahomans reveal a remarkable range of the state's political, environmental, agricultural, civil rights, and Native American history in the Cold War era. Nowhere else, for example, is the controversy stirred up by Congressman Mike Synar recounted so well, and Lowitt's analysis of the decades-long battle over grazing rights on federal land clarifies the issues surrounding a topic still in the news today. Likewise, Lowitt's analysis of Oklahoma's farm crisis in the 1970s and '80s extends far beyond the state's borders, illuminating significant and subtle aspects of an artificially engineered agricultural disaster whose consequences are still felt. His probing of the ""enigma of Mike Monroney,"" U.S. senator from Oklahoma during the McCarthy period, yields valuable insights into the political nature of the politician, the state, and the times. Other articles span decades, from the development of the Grand River Dam Authority (1935-1964) to the damming of the Arkansas River to create Kaw Reservoir (1957-1976) and efforts to improve Indian health in Oklahoma (1954-1980). Whether discussing environmental and cultural ecology or plumbing the politics of Fort Sill's entry into the missile age, Lowitt's articles are broad in scope and unsparing in detail. All based on the author's research in the Western History Collections at the University of Oklahoma, these essays form an invaluable historical repository, put into clarifying context by one of Oklahoma's most respected historians.

In Three Volumes. Volume 1, The Making Of A Progressive 1861-1912; Volume 2, The Persistence Of A Progressive 1913-1933; Volume 3, The Triumph Of A Progressive 1933-1944.

In Three Volumes. Volume 1, The Making Of A Progressive 1861-1912; Volume 2, The Persistence Of A Progressive 1913-1933; Volume 3, The Triumph Of A Progressive 1933-1944.

This valuable survey of the impact of New Deal agencies and programs focuses on the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin, the Pacific Northwest, and California during the period from 1932 to 1940.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt's agriculture secretary and vice-president, Henry A. Wallace, had completed his junior year at Iowa State College in 1909, his family sent him on a western tour ""in search of the Corn Belt farmer."" Young Henry was to report to the family journal, Wallace's Farmer, how former Corn Belt farmers were prospering in the districts newly irrigated under public or private auspices, such as Arizona's Salt River, Idaho's Boise-Payette and Twin Falls, and farms on the Arkansas River near Garden City, Kansas.Wallace's articles, collected and reprinted here for the first time, are lively descriptions of up-and-coming western locales such as Amarillo, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; the orange groves of southern California; the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys; and the Greeley District of Colorado. Along the way, the young reporter and agriculturist critiqued dry farming in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and wrestled calves on a Matador Land Company ranch in the Texas panhandle. Henry Wallace made a specialty of down-home conversation with farmers and their wives and of cross-examining the real-estate agents who profited from the government's commitment to sell water rights to the new property owners. He wrote what today we call New History, concentrating on the impact of irrigation on individuals more than technology, law, or institutions. Modern-day readers will prize Wallace's clear, expert analysis of the different environments that he visited and his farmer-conservationist ethic. Social historians will be interested as he explains how the closer proximity of irrigated farms and greater abundance of neighbors would produce prosperous communities with schools, roads, and social institutions better than most that then prevailed in America's rural regions. They will be fascinated to learn how the cooperative aspects of irrigation farming tempered the independence of the immigrants from the Corn Belt.

To settle and remain in the American Outback, the unforgiving land of the Oklahoma Panhandle, was an achievement. Prosperity and risk were present in equal measure. Comprising land that Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico did not want, and that Texas, after entering the Union as a slave state, could not have, the Oklahoma Panhandle was dubbed ""No Mans Land"". This geographical anomaly, 165 miles long and only 35 miles wide, belonged to no one and, before statehood, served as a haven for desperadoes and villains. Only with the creation of the Oklahoma Territory in 1890 was the area finally claimed by a government entity. The history of the Oklahoma Panhandle is an integral part of the history of the Great Plains. In the 1930s the Panhandle attracted attention as the heart of the Dust Bowl. Later the area became a world leader in the production of natural gas, and in the 1990s corporate mega hog farms moved in, creating a new set of challenges. As the twenty-first century unfolds, despite concerns about water, pollution, and population growth, the Panhandle remains the most prosperous part of the state, with wheat, meat, and energy as the largest contributors to its economy. 'A sweeping survey of the Panhandles ups and downs ...a new chapter in the history of a little known geographical anomaly' - ""Kansas History"". 'A carefully researched and readable book that will tell even well-informed Oklahomans something they didn't know about one of the most fascinating parts of the state' - ""Norman Transcript"". 'Richard Lowitt is professor emeritus of history at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of many works on twentieth-century American history, including ""One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickock Reports on the Great Depression"" (co-edited with Maurine Beasley).

"The senator's own account of his service to Oklahoma and the nation through depression and war"

Elmer Thomas (1876-1965) represented the people of Oklahoma in the state's first legislature and in Congress. This memoir, written shortly after he left the U.S. Senate in 1951 but never before published, chronicles his long career and offers a wealth of information on people and events that helped shape the development of the state and the course of American history.

Thomas became one of Oklahoma's first state senators in 1907 and was involved with financing the construction of public works. As a member of the U.S. Congress, he made it his business to understand the Federal Reserve System, and as the farm crisis of the 1920s worsened during the Great Depression, he consistently argued for inflating the currency to stimulate the economy--a struggle that became central to his career and that he eventually won.

Thomas's panoramic look at the issues of his time includes a behind-the-scenes view of the Nurnberg War Crimes Trial and also tells how he helped push funding for the atomic bomb project through Congress without disclosing its true nature. Thomas dedicated his career to improving the lot of rural residents, Native Americans, and working people. "Forty Years a Legislator" is a rich source of insight for all concerned with twentieth-century politics or the early years of Oklahoma statehood.

In the spring of 1877 government officials forcibly removed members of the Ponca tribe from their homelands in the southeastern corner of Dakota territory, relocating them in the Indian Territory in Oklahoma. When Ponca Chief Standing Bear attempted to lead a group of his people home he was arrested, detained, and put on trial. In this book Valerie Sherer Mathes and Richard Lowitt examine how the national publicity surrounding the trial of Chief Standing Bear, as well as a speaking tour by the chief and others, brought the plight of his tribe, and of tribespeople across America, to the attention of the general public, serving as a catalyst for the nineteenth-century Indian reform movement. As the authors show, the eventual ramifications of the removal, flight, and trial of Standing Bear were extensive, and included the rise of an organized humanitarian reform movement, significant changes in the administration of Indian affairs, and the passage of the General Allotment Act in 1887. This is the first full-length study of the Standing Bear trial and its consequences, and Mathes and Lowitt draw on a vast array of manuscript, diary, and journalistic sources in order to chronicle the events of 1877, as well as the effect the trial had on broader American popular opinion, on the federal government, and finally on the Native American population as a whole.