The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory

By Edward Tabor Linenthal

Book Overview

On April 19, 1995 the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City shook the nation, destroying our complacent sense of safety and sending a community into a tailspin of shock, grief, and bewilderment. Almost as difficult as the bombing itself has been the aftermath, its legacy for Oklahoma City and for the nation, and the struggle to recover from this unprecedented attack.
In The Unfinished Bombing, Edward T. Linenthal explores the many ways Oklahomans and other Americans have tried to grapple with this catastrophe. Working with exclusive access to materials gathered by the Oklahoma City National Memorial Archive and drawing from over 150 personal interviews with family members of those murdered, survivors, rescuers, and many others. Linenthal looks at how the bombing threatened cherished ideas about American innocence, sparked national debate on how to respond to terrorism at home and abroad, and engendered a new "bereaved community" in Oklahoma City itself. Linenthal examines how different stories about the bombing were told through positive narratives of civic renewal and of religious redemption and more negative narratives of toxicity and trauma. He writes about the extraordinary bonds of affection that were created in the wake of the bombing, acts of kindness, empathy, and compassion that existed alongside the toxic legacy of the event. The Unfinished Bombing offers a compelling look at both the individual and the larger cultural consequences of one of the most searing events in recent American history.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195161076
• ISBN13: 9780195161076
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Memory and History in Modern America

In so many ways this is a fascinating and thoughtful book on one of the most important tragedies in American public life in the last decade of the twentieth century. No area of historical study in the last twenty years has been more important than the nature of memory and "The Unfinished Bombing" is an attempt to understand how Americans have recalled the April 19, 1995, instance of domestic terrorism that took place in Oklahoma City. On that day Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols conspired to explode a truck bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building killing 168 people, injuring many more, and opening a wound on the national landscape about the nature of modern American democracy. It is an exceptional study of how stories about the past become a master narrative, and what lessons they teach to those affected. This memory is constructed gradually over time as people reflect on the meaning of what has transpired, and much of what emerges is not so much a fable or falsehood as it is a kind of poetry about events and situations that have great significance for the people involved. The memories over time become more significant than the cold, hard facts of the past, insofar as they are recoverable at all, and become the essential truths of the past for the members of a cultural group who hold them, enact them, or perceive them. This book helps to pull those ideas together into a coherent discussion concerning the 1995 bombing. Edward T. Linenthal, now at Indiana University where he edits the "Journal of American History," draws on extensive field work in Oklahoma City to construct this analysis of public memory and memorialization. Most interesting to me was how three preferred narratives emerged from the bombing, all rooted in personal understandings of what took place. The first was a progressive story of how the tragedy was overcome. It was about the heroism of the rescue workers, the support of citizens throughout the nation, and the recovery of Oklahoma City through urban renewal, commemoration, and a demonstration of character. This is very much, as Linenthal wrote, a story of "yes, it was horrendous but..." (p. 41) before telling all of the good that emerged from the experience. A second narrative, Linenthal believes, is one of redemption, "A crisis of meaning, as people struggled to locate it in an ongoing religious narrative" (p. 53). In this narrative, the pain and suffering of those who died, as well as those who survived, served as a sacrament, in the words of one survivor, Susan Urbach, "an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace" (p. 70). Finally, Linenthal unpacks what he calls a toxic narrative, one filled with loss, mourning, pain, and suffering. Sometimes it manifested itself in anger and agony, sometimes in fear and a desire for retribution, sometimes in the broken lives those who could not deal with the tragedy. It is this last narrative that Linenthal spends the most time with, writing at length about what

A timely casestudy of the American mourning/memorial process

'The Unfinished Bombing' provides a glimpse into what happened in Oklahoma City AFTER the bombing, and details the evolution of the National Memorial completed in 2000. In light of what happened on 9/11/2001, this book provides a remarkable insight into how we as a society grieve and memorialize sites of national tragedy. This is not any easy or simple process, and Linenthal does an excellent job in explaining what happened in OKC, and the wide variety of issues that were confonted in developing the memorial.I would recommend this book to anyone considering how America should memorialize the World Trade Center site.