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.
"Written before Sept. 11, yet there's no mistaking the lessons for New York in Oklahoma City's journey of public discourse and private healing."--New York Daily News.
Linenthal explores the ways Oklahomans and Americans have tried to grapple with the catastrophe. Working with exclusive access to materials, he looks at how the bombing threatened ideas about American innocence, sparked debate on how to respond to terrorism at home and abroad, and engendered a new "bereaved community" in Oklahoma City itself. Illustrations.
"Edward Linenthal is a sensitive interviewer, a keen researcher, and a wonderful writer. In this richly-layered book, he unveils how Oklahomans, and Americans generally, have made competing histories and memories out of a horrifying act of domestic terrorism. This book is a disturbing and moving story of heroism and exploitation, of the nature of grief and the language of memorialization, of the entangled human impulses to remember and forget. It is at once a heartbreaking and brilliant analysis of the character of public memory in America in the media age."--David W. Blight, author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
