One of Ours: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing

by Richard A. Serrano

Book Overview

Based on hundreds of interviews, including an in-depth exclusive with McVeigh, Serrano takes readers on a wild ride crisscrossing America, as the bomb components are collected and a seemingly normal young man hardens his resolve to save the country he loves at the expense of the government he hates. Photos.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393027430
• ISBN13: 9780393027433
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 321 Pages
• Weight: 1.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

down with the crazies

serrano has done a fine job describing the cultural circumstances that give birth to a mcveigh. internal dialogue and other inovations in the book truly give us an in on the the man who blowed up OK city. i assume these musings are fairly accurate considering the amount of time serrano spent with mcveigh. serrano may be a faulkner fan. "a light in august" perhaps. incidentaly, an interview with winston groom, author of "forest gump" reveals that gump is now president of the us; as the book was loosely based on George w bush years ago. down with more of the crazies, president or wild man in an orange jump suit they still love to blow things up.

One of the greatest books i've ever read on the bombing

I'm 17 and i've read up on the Oklahoma city bombing ever since it happened April 19, 1995. So far this is one of the greatest books i've ever read on the bombing, and beleive me i've read alot of them. It gives you step by step accounts of Timothy Mcveighs life, his family, his years of service in the United States Army, and after his time in the gulf war when driffted away from his family and his government. I couldnt put this book down,i rarely read anything unless it has to do with the OKCB, survival or military combat and martial arts.

Serrano's One of Ours: Timothy McVeigh and Oklahoma Bombing

For once, I am speechless. This book and the story behind it is more powerful than any answers that I can suggest. I will say that both the Prosecution and the Defense in the trial had some correct points. Even the Right to Bear Arms is not a one-sided negative right. One of the best people that I have ever met was a U.S. Anti-Terrorist agent who belonged to the NRA and always carried several weapons but would not harm a fly out of anger or personal vendetta. I think that the readers should read Robert Goldston's The Life and Death of Nazi Germany (now out of print, unfortunately). It maybe isn't so much your environment, your religion, or your general upbringing and even your military record that may count as much as the people or things you blame for the frustrations in life. Hitler was also a real military hero, although his upbringing was nowhere nearly as good as McVeigh's. But Hitler believed in blaming people in general and anger and eventually this led him into blaming absolutely the wrong people. But the Germans of his era had a society built on blame and anger, and this led them into blaming absolutely the wrong people. I believed that Germany should have been re-educated after the war, and I think that the U.S.A. has a lot of that blame and anger whose other sides are over-praise and over-love if you get the meaning. Maybe we should all be part of the final verdict on McVeigh, and before the Final Judge we probably will be.

Best book available on the subject

This is, apparently, the only serious book on the Oklahoma City bombing that encompasses the tragedy from beginning to end--from McVeigh's childhood, to his wanderings across right-wing America, to his trial in Denver. Although most of it is culled from now-familiar news accounts, "One of Ours" is still a compelling read. Unfortunately, Serrano didn't footnote his work--and, in fact, much of the book has an unpolished, rushed feel to it. Long passages are written in a stilted tone that doesn't do justice to the great dramatic, tragic and absurdly comic dimensions of the story (like Terry Nichols dumping bags of explosive fertilizer on his front lawn). Still, it's convincing: you read this and know that McVeigh acted alone, you sense that he was an immature, angry, moody young man acting out a fantasy of revolution that bore very little resemblance to reality. Some day, a serious historian will write a more contemplative, penetrating biography of Tim McVeigh (whose life, by the way, shares some interesting parallels with that of another famous loner/killer: Lee Harvey Oswald.) Until then, "One of Ours" is the best thing out there.

Mind Opening

This book gave me an insight to the mind of Tim McVeigh. Through it, I see what goes on inside a person to make them do such a tragic thing. Tim McVeigh is an obvious victim of the traumas of a derailed childhood as well as the usual military 'brainwashing'. I can see now, after reading this book, what would make a person actually do something like this. I was a resident of OKC when the bombing occurred. I no longer see McVeigh as a sociopathic monster, but as a victim in his own right.