Thompson rejects stereotyping the teens as thuggish stickup kids. Instead, she crafts social, personal, and familial narratives to humanize them ... Powerful ... Though she has painted a sharply accurate contextual picture of 1980s America and shown readers how to see that decade as the seed bed for our current national difficulties, Thompson’s argument that Reagan-era politics ignited white rage seems slightly askew.
For Ms. Thompson, a historian at the University of Michigan, the Goetz case is not a nuanced tale of a scared passenger overreacting to a perceived threat. Rather, it is that of a predator who, inspired by Ronald Reagan’s America, attacked innocent youths on a train ... Fear and Fury demonstrates the unfortunate hyperpolitical approach to history being practiced in today’s academy.
Thompson’s prose can be repetitive...but her skill for historical dot-connecting makes this a worthy, informative book. Skillfully exploring the link between an infamous subway attack and mean-spirited politics.
