Books That Inspire 2007
 
The West Wind Blows: The Autobiography of Edward Everett Dale
edited by Arrell M. Gibson


The West Wind Blows: The Autobiography of Edward Everett Dale, edited by Arrell Morgan Gibson, is the inspirational story of a cowboy, homesteader, deputy sheriff, and rural school teacher with less than an eighth grade education who became one of Oklahoma's greatest educators. Although Dale was born in Texas, he was raised in southwestern Oklahoma and considered Oklahoma his true home. This autobiography provides a vivid and entertaining account of his life on the Oklahoma frontier, his success as a student at the University of Oklahoma and Harvard, and his long, successful tenure as a history professor at OU. I feel very fortunate that I now help manage the Western History Collections, the library Dale started in 1927. In the course of my work at the Collections I have had the good fortune to meet many OU alumni who note with pride that they were once students of Dale.
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John R Lovett
Interim Curator
Western History Collections