The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory

Abstract

Once in a long while, the publication of a book has a particularly fortuitous timing, in which its relevance seems charged. Such was the case with the publication of Edward T. Linenthal's book The Unfinished Bombing within a few weeks after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Linenthal's book is an impressive achievement in and of itself. It is, and probably will remain, the definitive study of the effects of the 1995 terrorist bombing on Oklahoma City and its survivors. The book's publication post-September 11 demonstrated in prescient ways many of the issues that have emerged since that time around the site at ground zero in New York City. Linenthal spent a significant amount of time in Oklahoma City interviewing survivors, the staff of the Oklahoma City National Memorial, and many others, and his book combines this primary research with an analysis of the media coverage of the bombing and the trial and execution of Timothy McVeigh. In this careful and complex study, he tells the story of the bombing's aftermath as a tension of conflicting narratives: the progressive narrative, in which the response to the bombing is characterized in terms of local pride and the American heartland; the redemptive narrative, through which religious concepts are deployed to evoke a transcendence and in which the bombing allowed people to find the best in themselves; and a toxic narrative, about the ongoing and painful effects of the bombing that remain within the community.