Crude State

Mark Boxell is an assistant professor of history at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

"Mark Boxell has written a deeply researched book with a powerful moral compass. He presents us with a complex story of land rights, state power, and fraught racial politics that shape settler extraction of crude oil in twentieth-century Oklahoma. Crude State is for readers who want to better understand the oily origins of contemporary life--the socioecological consequences of oil extraction, fractious conflicts over land and land ownership, and the racial power exerted over and through all of it. This is a story, in other words, of the 'Petroleum Century' in all its complexity, told in a compelling narrative about a place that few people truly understand. We are lucky that Boxell is one of them and can invite us into this troubling, fascinating, and vital world."--Traci Brynne Voyles, author of The Settler Sea: California's Salton Sea and the Consequences of Colonialism "Crude State is carefully researched, thoughtfully written, and especially timely. It explores energy transitions, corporate power and state corruption, tariffs, increased political polarity, and ideas about who the state actually serves versus who it should serve. The way Crude State examines the interplay of oil, land, labor, and Indigenous sovereignty sharpens our understanding of the interconnected histories of settler colonialism, white supremacy, and the history of allotment."--Amy Kohout, author of Taking the Field: Soldiers, Nature, and Empire on American Frontiers