Unfinished Bombing

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 onhow 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.

"A priceless microcosm of hindsight in advance. Many books about the recent attacks have been published, but none of them can achieve what Linenthal offers: a carefully researched and thought-out study of a culture of aftermath. The value of this book is simple: It has the benefit of the passage of time."—Newsday, Readers still reeling from thousands of deaths in New York City, Washington, and Pennsylvania have much to learn from Linenthal's patient account of the aftermath of another recent national trauma."—Steven G. Kellman, USA Today, "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, "A poignant new look at the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building.... Linenthal's book is much more than just another account of the disaster, especially to Oklahomans who lived through the continuous media coverage.... He examines with the precision of a surgeon the different ways the Oklahoma City bombing has been interpreted.... This book is great and timely reading, in light of the Sept. 11 attacks."—Bob Burke, The Daily Oklahoman, "Linenthal movingly relates the tortuous process of body identification, family notification, grief counseling, and burial ceremonies and then offers a painstakingly detailed account of the memorialization process and its culmination in the choice of a memorial design.... A revealing, empathetic analysis that fairly examines this tragic act of terror, the worst on U.S. soil until this September."—Library Journal

Edward T. Linenthal is Edward M. Penson Professor of Religion and American Culture at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. He is the author of Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields and Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum, and co-editor of History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles to Preserve America's Past.