The Best Books of 2026 So Far: ‘Kin,’ ‘London Falling’ and More | UNW

I want to understand the roots of our political climate

by Heather Ann Thompson

When did white rage become normalized? This is the question that drew Thompson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, to the story of Bernie Goetz, a white man who shot four Black teenagers on a subway in 1984. In Thompson’s deeply researched account, the Goetz case becomes a through line to the present: the event that, against a backdrop of growing inequality and racial resentment in the early 1980s, first gave legal cover to white vigilantism, creating a template increasingly embraced on the right today. Read our review.