Episode 86: Heather Ann Thompson Evokes the Moment

In this episode, host Kate Carpenter interviews historian Dr. Heather Ann Thompson.

Heather is the author of three books. The first was Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City, which was first published in 2002. Her second book, published in 2016, was the astonishing Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. Blood in the Water won far more honors than I can list, most notably the Pulitzer Prize in History. And her newest book, which came out last week, is Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage. It's already drawing lots of well-deserved praise, and in this episode we'll talk more about how Heather learned to bring gripping accounts of historical events to life. In case that wasn't enough, Heather is a professor at the University of Michigan, the co-editor of two books series, and regularly writes for public outlets. She served as the consultant for the Academy Award-nominated documentary ATTICA, and is a co-founder of History Studio, a consulting firm that aims to connect historians and the entertainment industry. Honestly, if I kept telling you all the cool things she has done we would never get to the interview, but you can see why I've been eager to learn more about her work. You're going to love hearing about it too.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Heather Ann Thompson, Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage
• Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
• Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City
• Evernote
• The Fear and Fury audiobook, narrated by Erin Bennett
• Heather Ann Thompson, "How the Bernie Goetz Shootings Explain the Trump Era," The Atlantic, January 26, 2026
• Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
• Elliot Williams, Five Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York's Explosive '80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial That Divided the Nation
• Isabelle Allende
• Arundhati Roy
• W. E. B. DuBois
• Kimberlé Crenshaw
• Elizabeth Hinton
• LaShawn Harris, Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs & the Police Killing That Galvanized New York City
• Bench Ansfield, Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City
• Jonathan Mahler, The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990

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For a complete transcript, visit draftingthepast.com. Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.