The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory

How do Americans, long innocent of such things, comprehend large-scale acts of domestic terrorism? How do they commemorate the victims of such deeds? In this unfortunately timely book, historian Edward T. Linenthal examines these questions as they were addressed by the people of Oklahoma City after the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

In that attack, 168 men, women, and children died. Each left behind stunned, grieving relatives and loved ones; each left behind a personal history suddenly become part of the cultural and psychic property of the nation, as in the instance of Baylee Almon, whose corpse, cradled in the arms of a fireman, became an iconic image. As Linenthal writes in this careful work of cultural history, it fell on Oklahomans to process their grief in the wake of "violent mass death," no easy task, and to design and construct an appropriate memorial--which, after painful arguments over every detail, they did, and to stunning effect. Linenthal's thoughtful account summarizes some of the many lessons to be drawn from the Oklahoma City attack, lessons that, sadly, the world has had to learn anew. --Gregory McNamee