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.
PositiveThe Washington Post
Evenhanded and compassionate ... Thompson’s focus on Reaganomics veers her book into more provocative territory ... Her emphasis on income inequality, the gutting of government safety nets and the imprisonment of generations of young Black men through the drug war — while elucidating broader trends — seems too disconnected from the events of the fateful day.
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.
