Elliott Williams

uh then turned himself in and come back gone on trial and been acquitted like there would be armageddon around that around that story and i just think you know nobody's calling you racist for saying that it's just it is a reality of just how we all see um polarizing issues of criminal justice the racial dynamics are just unmistakable and i make that clear throughout the book

Of course.

of course no well well one it's a far more enjoyable story than i would have thought uh just sort of to read and relive um sort of getting in the minds because it's about burning this but it's not really right yeah that's what bernard that's what uh freud would say right sometimes a story about a subway vigilante isn't a story about a subway vigilante it's about sort of america and sort of the biases we hold and but also just issues that we grapple with today i would

I would say that people will come away knowing that the people, places, and things that we thought we knew and that we caricatured just are not as simple as we might've thought.

Like Bernard Goetz, whom I interviewed for the book, as the New Yorker said in their review of it, they said that he does not come off sympathetically in my interview, but at least comes out as three-dimensional.

And I sort of talk through like what's in this guy's head.

It's all over the place.

But what, you know, Bernagetz is just far more complex than I would have thought from anything I'd read as a kid.

These young men who were reduced to just criminal histories at the time were far more complex beings with needs and wants and desires and fears than the world would have wanted to let on.

And I think...

New York City in all of its flaws in the 1980s was far more complex than people maybe would have given it credit for.

And I just think the book is an entertaining and engaging look into complexity of the lives we all live through a story that we thought we knew really well.

I'm sorry.

Oh, Giuliani.

Yeah, I think one, wait a second, Al Sharpton only weighs 155 pounds now and wears suits all the time.

What?

You know, he cut off the conch and he's sort of a, you know, a cable television host.

Oh, sorry.

I thought on the Don Lemon show.

I thought the Don Lemon show viewers would know about conge alone, but no.