Oklahoma Reconsidered

Sarah Eppler Janda is a professor of history at Cameron University. She is the author of Prairie Power: Student Activism, Counterculture, and Backlash in Oklahoma, 1962–1972 and the coeditor (with Patricia Loughlin) of This Land Is Herland: Gendered Activism in Oklahoma from the 1870s to the 2010s. 

Patricia Loughlin is a professor of history at the University of Central Oklahoma. She is the author of Angie Debo: Daughter of the Prairie, with Excerpts from Her Childhood Diary. 

Jari Askins is a judge, lawyer, and politician. She served in Oklahoma’s House of Representatives and as Oklahoma’s fifteenth lieutenant governor.

“A powerful and unflinching account of Oklahoma history that embraces the good, the bad, and the ugly of the state’s fascinating history, from its earliest human inhabitation to the present.”—Benjamin H. Johnson, author of Texas: An American History

“If you wonder about Oklahoma, or teach about it, this book written by two fine historians who live there and who care about it is essential reading. Sarah Janda and Patricia Loughlin present a detailed elegy to an Indian Country that survived a statehood intended to eliminate that very place. What emerged was a state celebrating wealth and luck, but where modern Oklahomans struggle to reconcile Indigenous futures.”—Anne F. Hyde, author of Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800–1860

“In this sweeping yet detailed narrative Sarah Eppler Janda and Patricia Loughlin capture the essence of what makes Oklahoma a complex and thriving home to millions. Oklahoma Reconsidered is not a revision of Oklahoma’s history but rather a reordering that places an emphasis on the multiple narratives of the people who built the state. By focusing on such subjects as Indigenous sovereignty, civil rights, modernity, and violence this history tells a more complete and thoughtful story about the place Oklahomans call home.”—María E. Montoya, coauthor of Global Americans: A History of the United States