Why a 1984 subway shooting still echoes across America in ‘Fear and Fury’

Historian Heather Ann Thompson had been in the midst of writing a book in 2023 when she realized she needed to stop and start a new one.

With Donald Trump on course to return to the White House, Thompson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her book about the Attica prison uprising, “Blood in the Water,” says she wanted to understand the rage that fueled many of his White, working-class supporters.

This led her back to Ronald Reagan’s presidency, examining Reagan’s use of terms such as...