Ghosts of Crook County

Praise

“With page-turning flair, Russell Cobb pursues the hidden truth about Indian oil allotments, white politics, and Black people who dreamed of a better life in early Oklahoma. The result is a suspenseful story of corruption, power, and malice that you will never forget!”
—Donald L. Fixico (Muscogee, Seminole, Shawnee, and Sac and Fox), author of The State of Sequoyah: Indigenous Sovereignty and the Quest for an Indian State

“Russell Cobb is a master storyteller, as well as being prolific. He is dedicated to digging out and revealing the corruption and crookedness of his and my home state. Ghosts of Crook County is his best yet.”
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, American Book Award-winning author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

“Russell Cobb has delivered a bombshell of a book. Ghosts of Crook County isn’t just a deeply researched, gripping historical detective story. It is also a compelling meditation on wealth and power. Highly recommended.”
—Scott Ellsworth, author of The Ground Breaking: The Tulsa Race Massacre and an American City’s Search for Justice

“Weaving autobiography and investigative journalism, deep history and pointed critique, together in an enthralling must-read story of Oklahoma oil, Russell Cobb reminds us, in searing fashion, how crude exacts a heavy price for those communities caught up in its false dreams…This is a masterful book that reveals Oklahoma’s past (hidden) encounters with crude with an eye to its enduring potential for violence and injustice today.”
—Darren Dochuk, author of Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America

“With the poetic writing of a literary savant, Cobb brings together Indigenous sovereignty, Indigenous children, and the unique capitalist exploitation that happened when oil was discovered in Indian Territory, leading to further forms of Indigenous dispossession. If you’ve read Killers of the Flower Moon and were enraged but engrossed in the story, Ghosts of Crook County is also the book for you—and you’ll likely enjoy it more!”
—Kyle T. Mays (Saginaw Chippewa), author of An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

“Like some bastard son of Angie Debo and David Grann, in Ghosts of Crook County Russell Cobb blends the archival acuity of the former with the reliable readability of the latter.”
—Jeff Martin, owner, Magic City Books