The End Bookstore Presents – An evening with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Heather Ann Thompson, in conversation with Jess Denke, discussing FEAR AND FURY: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage (Penguin Random House 2/10/26)

• Thursday, March 5, 2026
• 6:30pm, Muhlenberg College, Trexler Library
• Free, registration required, The End Bookstore’s website – TICKETS
• Books will be available to purchase at the event.
• Only books purchased through The End Bookstore are eligible to be signed.

In this masterful, groundbreaking work, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Heather Ann Thompson reveals how the infamous New York subway shooting of 1984 divided a nation, unveiling the potent cocktail of rage and resentment that ushered in a new era of white vigilante violence. 

On December 22, 1984, white New Yorker Bernhard Goetz shot four Black teenagers at point-blank in a New York City subway car. Goetz slipped into the subway tunnels undetected, fleeing the city to evade capture.

From the moment Goetz turned himself in, the narrative surrounding the shooting became a matter of extraordinary debate, igniting public outcry and capturing the attention of the nation. Drawing from never-before-seen and archival interviews, newspaper accounts, legal files, and more, Heather Ann Thompson sheds new light on the social and political conditions which set the stage for these events, delving into the lives of Goetz and his four victims—Darrell Cabey, Barry Allen, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur. Fear and Fury is the remarkable account and searing indictment of a crucial turning point in American history.

Heather was recently interviewed on The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart.

Author HEATHER ANN THOMPSON is a historian and the Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. Thompson is also the author of Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City. She writes regularly on the criminal justice system for myriad publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. Thompson’s policy work includes serving on a National Academy of Sciences blue-ribbon panel that studied the causes and consequences of mass incarceration in the US. She also co-runs the Carceral State Research Project at the University of Michigan.

Heather will be in-conversation with Jess Denke, Community Engagement Librarian, Teaching Librarian to the Social Sciences, Head of Library DEI Initiatives at Muhlenberg College.

The End Bookstore is a full-service, general-interest independent bookstore serving the Lehigh Valley. Located at 3055 W. Tilghman Street in Allentown, the store provides books, gifts and programming for adults and children, creating opportunity to learn, explore and engage with the world and our community. theendbooks.co

Let’s Play Books Co. is the parent company of the End Bookstore, and the Lehigh Valley Book Festival held annually the last weekend in March.