Alfalfa Bill

Alfalfa Bill PDF Author: Robert L. Dorman
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806162201
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
In this masterful biography, Robert L. Dorman traces the career of William H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray from his hardscrabble childhood in post–Civil War Texas to his remarkable ascendancy as a nationally known political figure in the mid-twentieth century. The first comprehensive portrait of Murray to be published in fifty years, Alfalfa Bill is both the exploration of a larger-than-life personality and an illuminating account of the birth of political conservatism in Oklahoma. As Dorman reveals, no political label readily fit Murray. The core conservatism of his Texas years was caught up in the ferment of three major periods of American reform—the Populist uprising, the Progressive Era, and the New Deal. Over his long career, Murray strongly advocated for states’ rights, limited government, and strict constitutionalism, yet he was also a consistent foe of corporations and concentrated wealth. The society he sought was small-scale, decentralized, agrarian—and racially segregated. Although he claimed to represent high principles, Murray as a politician was an opportunist, loved a good fight, had a flair for the theatrical, and hungered for power. Dorman depicts Murray from his days as a political operative in the Chickasaw Nation to his leadership of the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention, and from the Speaker’s chair of the Oklahoma legislature to the halls of Congress. The book follows Murray’s quixotic attempt to found an agricultural colony in Bolivia, and chronicles his amazing Oklahoma comeback in the 1930 gubernatorial election. The final chapters detail Murray’s legendary term as state governor, his failed candidacy for president, and his emergence as a fierce critic of New Deal liberalism and racial desegregation. Unlike earlier biographies of Murray, Alfalfa Bill brings issues of race, class, and gender to the forefront, often in surprising ways. On the surface, the Murray saga was an American success story, yet his rise came at a price for Murray himself, his family, and the people of the state he helped to create. An indelible portrait emerges of an ambitious, domineering, relentless, and unapologetically racist figure whose tarnished legacy seems painfully relevant in America’s current political climate.

Alfalfa Bill

Alfalfa Bill PDF Author: Robert L. Dorman
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806162201
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this masterful biography, Robert L. Dorman traces the career of William H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray from his hardscrabble childhood in post–Civil War Texas to his remarkable ascendancy as a nationally known political figure in the mid-twentieth century. The first comprehensive portrait of Murray to be published in fifty years, Alfalfa Bill is both the exploration of a larger-than-life personality and an illuminating account of the birth of political conservatism in Oklahoma. As Dorman reveals, no political label readily fit Murray. The core conservatism of his Texas years was caught up in the ferment of three major periods of American reform—the Populist uprising, the Progressive Era, and the New Deal. Over his long career, Murray strongly advocated for states’ rights, limited government, and strict constitutionalism, yet he was also a consistent foe of corporations and concentrated wealth. The society he sought was small-scale, decentralized, agrarian—and racially segregated. Although he claimed to represent high principles, Murray as a politician was an opportunist, loved a good fight, had a flair for the theatrical, and hungered for power. Dorman depicts Murray from his days as a political operative in the Chickasaw Nation to his leadership of the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention, and from the Speaker’s chair of the Oklahoma legislature to the halls of Congress. The book follows Murray’s quixotic attempt to found an agricultural colony in Bolivia, and chronicles his amazing Oklahoma comeback in the 1930 gubernatorial election. The final chapters detail Murray’s legendary term as state governor, his failed candidacy for president, and his emergence as a fierce critic of New Deal liberalism and racial desegregation. Unlike earlier biographies of Murray, Alfalfa Bill brings issues of race, class, and gender to the forefront, often in surprising ways. On the surface, the Murray saga was an American success story, yet his rise came at a price for Murray himself, his family, and the people of the state he helped to create. An indelible portrait emerges of an ambitious, domineering, relentless, and unapologetically racist figure whose tarnished legacy seems painfully relevant in America’s current political climate.

Alfalfa Bill Murray

Alfalfa Bill Murray PDF Author: Keith L. Bryant
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806154381
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
William H. (Alfalfa Bill) Murray is the most important figure in the political history of Oklahoma. No other individual contributed so greatly to the formation of its political institutions—and there was never a more colorful or controversial character on the state’s political scene. Flamboyant, unpredictable, and stubborn, Alfalfa Bill became a legend. President of the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention, speaker of the first House of Representatives, two-term congressman, and governor of Oklahoma, the Texas-born Murray made an indelible mark on his adopted state. But he also made enemies. During the struggle for statehood he waged a hard battle over the constitution, taking on President Theodore Roosevelt and Secretary of War William Howard Taft. As Oklahoma governor, Murray challenged the oil industry, newspaper interests, and the state of Texas. To enforce his programs, he relied on the National Guard. While governor, Murray called out the guard forty-seven times for duties ranging from policing ticket sales at University of Oklahoma football games, to patrolling oil fields, to guarding the Red River Bridge during the infamous Bridge War with Texas. In 1932 he ran for the Democratic nomination for president, and his fame spread across the nation. When candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt offered a program for national recovery, Murray countered with “Bread, Butter, Bacon, and Beans.” In describing Murray’s frustrated efforts to preserve the agricultural American of the nineteenth century, Bryant has written a perceptive biography presenting the first clearly defined portrait of this determined but inflexible man.

The Red River Bridge War

The Red River Bridge War PDF Author: Rusty Williams
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1623494052
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Winner, 2017 Oklahoma Book Award, sponsored by the Oklahoma Center for the Book Winner, 2016 Outstanding Book on Oklahoma History, sponsored by the Oklahoma Historical Society At the beginning of America’s Great Depression, Texas and Oklahoma armed up and went to war over a 75-cent toll bridge that connected their states across the Red River. It was a two-week affair marked by the presence of National Guardsmen with field artillery, Texas Rangers with itchy trigger fingers, angry mobs, Model T blockade runners, and even a costumed Native American peace delegation. Traffic backed up for miles, cutting off travel between the states. This conflict entertained newspaper readers nationwide during the summer of 1931, but the Red River Bridge War was a deadly serious affair for many rural Americans at a time when free bridges and passable roads could mean the difference between survival and starvation. The confrontation had national consequences, too: it marked an end to public acceptance of the privately owned ferries, toll bridges, and turnpikes that threatened to strangle American transportation in the automobile age. The Red River Bridge War: A Texas-Oklahoma Border Battle documents the day-to-day skirmishes of this unlikely conflict between two sovereign states, each struggling to help citizens get goods to market at a time of reduced tax revenue and little federal assistance. It also serves as a cautionary tale, providing historical context to the current trend of re-privatizing our nation’s highway infrastructure.

Ezra Pound's Washington Cantos and the Struggle for Light

Ezra Pound's Washington Cantos and the Struggle for Light PDF Author: Alec Marsh
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350096563
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
The instalments of Ezra Pound's life-project, The Cantos, composed during his incarceration in Washington after the Second World War were to have served as a "Paradiso" for his epic. Beautiful and tormented, enigmatic and irascible by turns, they express the poet's struggle to reconcile his striving for justice with his extreme Right politics. In heavily coded language, Pound was writing activist political poetry. Through an in-depth reading of the "Washington Cantos" this book reveals the ways in which Pound integrated into his verse themes and ideas that remain central to American far-right ideology to this day: States' Rights, White-supremacy and racial segregation, the usurpation of the Constitution by the Supreme Court, and history as racial struggle. Pound's struggle was also personal. These poems also celebrate his passion for his muse and lover, Sheri Martinelli, as he tries to teach her his politics and, in the final poems, mount his legal defence against the unresolved treason charges hanging over his head. Reading the poetry alongside correspondence and unpublished archival writings, Ezra Pound's Washington Cantos and the Struggle for Light is an important new work on a poet who stands at the heart of 20th-century Modernism. Building on his previous book John Kasper and Ezra Pound: Saving the Republic (Bloomsbury, 2015), Alec Marsh explores the way the political ideas revealed in Pound's correspondence manifested themselves in his later poetry.

United States Oil Policy, 1890-1964

United States Oil Policy, 1890-1964 PDF Author: Gerald D. Nash
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822975742
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Gerald D. Nash offers a balanced survey on American oil policies over a seventy-five year span, and places in historical perspective the controversies of government- business relations that have resulted from oil depletion and surplus allowances. Focusing on a single industry, Nash provides a valuable study on the government's role in private economic activity. He concludes that Americans have given the government great power in regulating the nation's industries, and in particular, as they relate to defense considerations, and the laws of supply and demand within American borders, and internationally.

Uncle John's Perpetually Pleasing Bathroom Reader

Uncle John's Perpetually Pleasing Bathroom Reader PDF Author: Bathroom Readers' Institute
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 160710931X
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 495

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Book Description
The beloved bathroom reader series returns with this twenty-sixth edition that’s flush with weird facts on a wide array of topics. The twenty-sixth annual edition of Uncle John’s wildly successful series is all-new and jam-packed with the BRI’s patented mix of fun and information. Open to any page and you may find an interesting origin (like the origin of the snow globe) or a piece of obscure history (like the true story of the man who tried to repeal the law of gravity). You’ll also find weird news, urban legends, brain teasers, classic riddles, bizarre headlines, and of course, the incredible factoids at the bottom of each page. Here are a few of the perpetually pleasing articles awaiting you: · The Lamest Excuses of All Time · How to Survive on . . . Roadkill · Astronauts Who Got Kicked Out of Space · The Woman Who Was Her Own Twin · Foiled by Technology: Dumb Crooks Edition · The History of the Teleprompter, the Police Car, and the Fly Swatter · “Jogging Makes You Dumber,” and Other Real Study Results · The Lost Fortune of Abraham Lincoln · Boxing Lingo · And much, much more 2014 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award Silver Winner in Humor!

The Broken Statue

The Broken Statue PDF Author: Bob Perry
Publisher: Bob Perry
ISBN: 0595410901
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Buried in the red soil of the Oklahoma prairie is a secret only Charlie McDonagh can fully reveal. Charlie is an ordinary man who is witness to extraordinary events and people. A stone statue of a striking young woman, broken into a hundred pieces is uncovered from the dirt of a remote location-a broken statue representing shattered lives and shattered dreams. The story of the statues is one of love, greed, betrayal, power, and crushed aspirations. The statue symbolizes what was and what could have been. A tale of a great oil empire betrayed, destroying the lives of the family who built it. An intriguing story based on the real-life legacy of the Marland Mansion and the statue still located within its walls.

Guide to Photographs in the Western History Collections of the University of Oklahoma

Guide to Photographs in the Western History Collections of the University of Oklahoma PDF Author: Kristina L. Southwell
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806145951
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Begun in 1927 by University of Oklahoma history professor Edward Everett Dale, the Western History Collections gathers and preserves rare research materials for scholars in anthropology, Native American studies, Oklahoma history, and the history of the American West. This guide has been compiled to make the photographs in the collections more accessible. The second edition adds descriptions of 165 new collections comprising 159,000 photographs. The 826 photograph collections that this guide thus details encompass Native American culture; frontier and pioneer life in Oklahoma and Indian territories; Wild West shows; the range cattle industry; the petroleum industry; and gunfighters, outlaws, and lawmen. New additions include the Lucille Clough Collection of 1,800 prints, postcards, and stereograph cards of American Indians and Alaska Natives, and First Peoples of Canada.

Crude Volatility

Crude Volatility PDF Author: Robert McNally
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231543689
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
As OPEC has loosened its grip over the past ten years, the oil market has been rocked by wild price swings, the likes of which haven't been seen for eight decades. Crafting an engrossing journey from the gushing Pennsylvania oil fields of the 1860s to today's fraught and fractious Middle East, Crude Volatility explains how past periods of stability and volatility in oil prices help us understand the new boom-bust era. Oil's notorious volatility has always been considered a scourge afflicting not only the oil industry but also the broader economy and geopolitical landscape; Robert McNally makes sense of how oil became so central to our world and why it is subject to such extreme price fluctuations. Tracing a history marked by conflict, intrigue, and extreme uncertainty, McNally shows how—even from the oil industry's first years—wild and harmful price volatility prompted industry leaders and officials to undertake extraordinary efforts to stabilize oil prices by controlling production. Herculean market interventions—first, by Rockefeller's Standard Oil, then, by U.S. state regulators in partnership with major international oil companies, and, finally, by OPEC—succeeded to varying degrees in taming the beast. McNally, a veteran oil market and policy expert, explains the consequences of the ebbing of OPEC's power, debunking myths and offering recommendations—including mistakes to avoid—as we confront the unwelcome return of boom and bust oil prices.

The University of Oklahoma

The University of Oklahoma PDF Author: David W. Levy
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 080615277X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
In 1917 it was still possible for the University of Oklahoma’s annual Catalogue to include a roster of every student’s name and hometown. A compact and close-knit community, those 2,500 students and their 130 professors studied and taught at a respectable (though small, relatively uncomplicated, and rather insular) regional university. During the following third of a century, the school underwent changes so profound that their cumulative effect amounted to a transformation. This second volume in David Levy’s projected three-part history chronicles these changes, charting the University’s course through one of the most dramatic periods in American history. Following Oklahoma’s flagship school through decades that saw six U.S. presidents, eleven state governors, and five university presidents, Volume 2 of The University of Oklahoma: A History documents the institution’s evolution into a complex, diverse, and multifaceted seat of learning. By 1950 enrollment had increased fivefold, and by every measure—the number of colleges and campus buildings, degrees awarded and programs offered, volumes in the library, faculty publications, out-of-state and foreign students in attendance—the University was on its way to becoming a world-class educational institution. Levy weaves together human and institutional history as he describes the school’s remarkable—sometimes remarkably difficult—development in response to unprecedented factors: two world wars, the cultural shifts of the 1920s, the Great Depression, the rise of the petroleum industry, the farm crisis and Dust Bowl, the emergence of new technologies, and new political and social forces such as those promoting and resisting racial justice. National and world events, state politics, campus leadership, the ever-changing student body: in triumph and defeat, in small successes and grand accomplishments, all come to varied and vibrant life in this second installment of the definitive history of Oklahoma’s storied center of learning.