Heather Ann Thompson with Andrea Elliott: Fear and Fury

Join Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Heather Ann Thompson and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Andrea Elliott for a conversation about crime in New York, the politics of law and order, and her new book, Fear and Fury: Bernie Goetz, the Reagan Eighties, and the Rebirth of White Rage.

In 1984, a white man named Bernhard Goetz shot four Black teenagers in a New York City subway car. His brutal crime — and the public’s polarized reaction to it — revealed an insidious white rage and resentment in the shadows of our culture. Intensified by politicians and tabloid media, a disturbing celebration of vigilantism took hold as a fully legitimate form of justice, fracturing American race relations — and uncannily presaging the politics of the Trump era. Drawing from never-before-seen archival interviews, legal files, and more, Heather Ann Thompson sheds new light on the social and political conditions which set the stage for these events. Fear and Fury is the remarkable account and searing indictment of a crucial turning point in American history.

In celebration of the book’s launch, hear Thompson and Elliott talk about the case — its decades-long reverberations, how it set the stage for the politics of resentment and vigilantism that have defined our own political moment, and what it can teach us about the extreme edges of law and order.

“This book is like a secret decoder ring for all those trying to understand the politics of white rage today.”
—Michelle Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The New Jim Crow

“A timely, brilliantly documented re-examination of the 1980s and the lingering hostility to the Civil Rights movement. Fear and Fury thoughtfully explores the demands of racial equality and carefully details America’s often-violent resistance to racial justice.”
—Bryan Stevenson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy