Standoff: Race, Policing, and a Deadly Assault That Gripped a Nation

Journalist Thompson debuts with a spellbinding and meticulously researched account of the deadly attack on Dallas law enforcement officers at a July 2016 rally to protest the police shootings of Philando Castile, in Minnesota, and Alton Sterling, in Louisiana. Drawing on interviews and video and audio recordings, Thompson recreates the assault—which killed five police officers, wounded 11 people, and ended with the death of attacker Micah Xavier Johnson by robot-delivered bomb—from the perspectives of key players including Dallas police chief David Brown; SWAT team negotiator Larry Gordon; protester Shetamia Taylor, who was shot in the leg while shielding her son from Johnson’s bullets; and trauma surgeon Brian Williams, who operated on the wounded officers. Thompson laces her moment-by-moment rundown of the event with harrowing descriptions of the string of police killings that galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement, and illuminating historical tangents about the JFK assassination, the Attica prison uprising, and the disastrous 1985 police bombing of a black activist group’s headquarters in Philadelphia. Throughout, she spotlights the complexities of the racial dynamics involved, noting, for example, that Williams, “the only black doctor on a team of twelve trauma surgeons,” both sympathized with Johnson’s anger over police killings of black men and tried to save the lives of the white cops he targeted. This standout account is both a riveting page-turner and a nuanced portrait of one of contemporary America’s most divisive social issues. (Sept.)