The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory - Hardcover

Linenthal, Edward Tabor

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195136721 ISBN 13: 9780195136722

Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc, 2001

Synopsis

Edward Linenthal has written or contributed to several books concerning the way Americans remember and memorialize the past. This book, about the Oklahoma city bombing, is more specifically about how that horrific event has been commemorated by local residents and the US nation at large. He describes it as the story of the formation of a bereaved community. Linenthal has closely followed the process of creating the official memorial of the bombing, and has had the benefit of complete access to the archives and storerooms of the memorial commission. In the course of his work, he has also made the acquaintance the survivors personally - a further source of material (both their recollections, and examples of the outpouring of mail they received from all over the world).

About this title

Review:

"Linenthal brings tremendous sensitivity to his examination of the psychic consequences of the bombing... No book concerning the bombing has so comprehensively addressed the national psyche. This combination of psychological insight and cultural criticism, along with the hopeful assessment of a still-fresh tragedy, will attract a wide audience."--Publisher's Weekly"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"An extraordinarily intimate and moving account of the multiplicity of responses to a searing act of violence, The Unfinished Bombing confirms Edward Linenthal's status as one of America's most eloquent and incisive chroniclers of violence, death, memorialization, and contested memory."--John Dower, author of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War Two, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award"Demonstrating how to combine respect for suffering with searching analysis, Edward Linenthal examines the responses of bereaved family members, survivors, and community leaders in Oklahoma City. Making an honest reckoning with the features of tragedy that push human understanding to--and past--its limits, The Unfinished Bombing provides an unforgettable case study in the strategies human beings create to manage the memory of searing loss. This book deepens the way we think about the misfortunes of the 1995 bombing, as well as the customs and habits of mind of Americans dealing with violence and mortality."--Patricia Nelson Limerick, author of The Legacy of Conquest and Something in the Soil"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 "Linenthal brings tremendous sensitivity to his examination of the psychic consequences of the bombing... No book concerning the bombing has so comprehensively addressed the national psyche. This combination of psychological insight and cultural criticism, along with the hopeful assessment of a still-fresh tragedy, will attract a wide audience."--Publisher's Weekly "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 "An extraordinarily intimate and moving account of the multiplicity of responses to a searing act of violence, The Unfinished Bombing confirms Edward Linenthal's status as one of America's most eloquent and incisive chroniclers of violence, death, memorialization, and contested memory."--John Dower, author of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War Two, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award "Demonstrating how to combine respect for suffering with searching analysis, Edward Linenthal examines the responses of bereaved family members, survivors, and community leaders in Oklahoma City. Making an honest reckoning with the features of tragedy that push human understanding to--and past--its limits, The Unfinished Bombing provides an unforgettable case study in the strategies human beings create to manage the memory of searing loss. This book deepens the way we think about themisfortunes of the 1995 bombing, as well as the customs and habits of mind of Americans dealing with violence and mortality."--Patricia Nelson Limerick, author of The Legacy of Conquest and Something in the Soil "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 "Linenthal brings tremendous sensitivity to his examination of the psychic consequences of the bombing... No book concerning the bombing has so comprehensively addressed the national psyche. This combination of psychological insight and cultural criticism, along with the hopeful assessment of a still-fresh tragedy, will attract a wide audience."--Publisher's Weekly "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 "An extraordinarily intimate and moving account of the multiplicity of responses to a searing act of violence, The Unfinished Bombing confirms Edward Linenthal's status as one of America's most eloquent and incisive chroniclers of violence, death, memorialization, and contested memory."--John Dower, author of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War Two, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award "Demonstrating how to combine respect for suffering with searching analysis, Edward Linenthal examines the responses of bereaved family members, survivors, and community leaders in Oklahoma City. Making an honest reckoning with the features of tragedy that push human understanding to--and past--its limits, The Unfinished Bombing provides an unforgettable case study in the strategies human beings create to manage the memory ofsearing loss. This book deepens the way we think about the misfortunes of the 1995 bombing, as well as the customs and habits of mind of Americans dealing with violence and mortality."--Patricia Nelson Limerick, author of The Legacy of Conquest and Something in the Soil "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 "Linenthal brings tremendous sensitivity to his examination of the psychic consequences of the bombing... No book concerning the bombing has so comprehensively addressed the national psyche. This combination of psychological insight and cultural criticism, along with the hopeful assessment of astill-fresh tragedy, will attract a wide audience."--Publisher's Weekly"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, empatheticanalysis that fairly examines this tragic act of terror, the worst on U.S. soil until this September."--Library Journal"An extraordinarily intimate and moving account of the multiplicity of responses to a searing act of violence, The Unfinished Bombing confirms Edward Linenthal's status as one of America's most eloquent and incisive chroniclers of violence, death, memorialization, and contested memory."--John Dower, author of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War Two, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award"Demonstrating how to combine respect for suffering with searching analysis, Edward Linenthal examines the responses of bereaved family members, survivors, and community leaders in Oklahoma City. Making an honest reckoning with the features of tragedy that push human understanding to--and past--itslimits, The Unfinished Bombing provides an unforgettable case study in the strategies human beings create to manage the memory of searing loss. This book deepens the way we thinkabout the misfortunes of the 1995 bombing, as well as the customs and habits of mind of Americans dealing with violenceand mortality."--Patricia Nelson Limerick, author of The Legacy of Conquest and Something in the Soil"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 movingstory 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 ofRace and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory

About the Author:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0195136721
• ISBN 13: 9780195136722
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320