A profoundly moving nonfiction picture book about tragedy, hope, and healing from award-winning author Chris Barton. Sometimes bad things happen, and you have to tell everyone. Sometimes terrible things happen, and everybody knows. On April 19, 1995, something terrible happened in Oklahoma City: a bomb exploded, and people were hurt and killed. But that was not the end of the story. Those who survived—and those who were forever changed—shared their stories and began to heal. Near the site of the bomb blast, an American elm tree began to heal as well. People took care of the tree just as they took care of each other. The tree and its seedlings now offer solace to people around the world grappling with tragedy and loss. Released to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, this book commemorates what was lost and offers hope for the future.

From its birth to the present, Oklahoma City has consistently built and reshaped its appearance, ideals, and industry. Through changing fortunes, the city has continued to grow and prosper by overcoming adversity and maintaining the strong, independent culture of its citizens. With a selection of fine historic images from his best-selling book Historic Photos of Oklahoma City, Larry Johnson provides a valuable and revealing historical retrospective on the growth and development of the city. Remembering Oklahoma City captures this journey through still photography selected from the finest archives. From the Land Run of 1889 to the city's contribution to national defense during World War II and the postwar era beyond, Remembering Oklahoma City follows life, government, education, and events throughout the city's history. This volume captures unique and rare scenes through the lens of more than a hundred historic photographs. Published in vivid black-and-white, these images communicate historic events and everyday life of two centuries of people building a unique and prosperous city.

Three years in the making, "Forever Changed" is the exclusive volume that brings together 80 survivors and family members of victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. This powerful work tells the special stories of those who died, the pain endured by their families, and the ongoing struggle of the survivors.

DIVStudy of how the memorials created in Oklahoma City and at the World Trade Center site raise questions about the relationship between cultural memory and consumerism./div

Oklahoma has an excellent photographic record, largely because the history of the twin territories unfolded along the same general timeline as modern photography itself. With a selection of fine historic images from his best-selling book Historic Photos of Oklahoma, Larry Johnson provides a valuable and revealing historical retrospective on the growth and development of the state. Just as viewing a succession of school photos reveals the periods of beauty and awkwardness, innocence and maturity, and hardship and joy in a child's life, the reader of this book will see the state at its best and less than best, with glimpses in between of how we used to live, work, and play in the forty-sixth state of the Union. Remembering Oklahoma is not an illustrated history of Oklahoma, nor is it an attempt at a visual chronology of the state. Rather, the photographs included here tell the story of this diverse group of people called Oklahomans as witnessed in their faces, the homes they cherished, and the streets they traveled.

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.

For more than a century, American communities erected monuments to western pioneers. Although many of these statues receive little attention today, the images they depict—sturdy white men, saintly mothers, and wholesome pioneer families—enshrine prevailing notions of American exceptionalism, race relations, and gender identity. Pioneer Mother Monuments is the first book to delve into the long and complex history of remembering, forgetting, and rediscovering pioneer monuments. In this book, historian Cynthia Culver Prescott combines visual analysis with a close reading of primary-source documents. Examining some two hundred monuments erected in the United States from the late nineteenth century to the present, Prescott begins her survey by focusing on the earliest pioneer statues, which celebrated the strong white men who settled—and conquered—the West. By the 1930s, she explains, when gender roles began shifting, new monuments came forth to honor the Pioneer Mother. The angelic woman in a sunbonnet, armed with a rifle or a Bible as she carried civilization forward—an iconic figure—resonated particularly with Mormon audiences. While interest in these traditional monuments began to wane in the postwar period, according to Prescott, a new wave of pioneer monuments emerged in smaller communities during the late twentieth century. Inspired by rural nostalgia, these statues helped promote heritage tourism. In recent years, Americans have engaged in heated debates about Confederate Civil War monuments and their implicit racism. Should these statues be removed or reinterpreted? Far less attention, however, has been paid to pioneer monuments, which, Prescott argues, also enshrine white cultural superiority—as well as gender stereotypes. Only a few western communities have reexamined these values and erected statues with more inclusive imagery. Blending western history, visual culture, and memory studies, Prescott’s pathbreaking analysis is enhanced by a rich selection of color and black-and-white photographs depicting the statues along with detailed maps that chronologically chart the emergence of pioneer monuments.