Whither the Oxford History of the United States?

On Sunday in the Boston Globe's "Ideas" section, Christopher Shea investigated the status of the Oxford History ofd the United States,a project that for a half of a century has been in an ever-changing state of becoming. There is hope on the horizon that some of the long-awaited volumes will see the light of day, but we've heard all of this before. What is striking (and frustrating) is that the volumes that have been completed have been of the highest quality, and so the delays have not represented a failure of quality on the part of those who have gotten the work done but rather a failure of execution on the part of many who have not (or who ended up writing different books when they could not quite fulfill the parameters of the assignment).