-
-
Price: £8.99
Online Discount: 10%
Your Price: £8.09
Availability: Available for dispatch within 1-2 working days.
Add To Basket
EAN: 9780753515532
Format: Paperback
Published: 1 Jan 2009
Other Editions:
Hardback, ebook
Synopsis
We are the safest humans who ever lived - the statistics prove it. And yet the media tells a different story with its warnings and scare stories. How is it possible that anxiety has become the stuff of daily life?
In this ground-breaking, compulsively readable book, Dan Gardner shows how our flawed strategies for perceiving risk influence our lives, often with unforeseen and sometimes-tragic consequences. He throws light on our paranoia about everything from paedophiles to terrorism and reveals how the most significant threats are actually the mundane risks to which we pay little attention.
Speaking to psychologists and scientists, as well as looking at the influence of the media and politicians, Gardner uncovers one of the central puzzles of our time: why are the safest people in history living in a culture of fear?
What the critics say
Excellent ... Gardner analyses everything from the media's predilection for irrational scare stories to the cynical use of fear by politicians pushing a particular agenda ... A cheery corrective to modern paranoia
- Economist
Terrific ... exceptionally good - has the clarity of Malcolm Gladwell
- Evening Standard
Enlivening ... a fascinating insight into the peculiar and devastating nature of human fear
- Sunday Telegraph
Stimulating ... where writers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Francis Wheen have been content largely to enumerate the errors of less rational men and women, Dan Gardner has collated part of what we need to diagnose the problem
- Independent on Sunday
Compelling ... Gardner aims to get us thinking more carefully about how we run our lives - and make it harder for politicians, the media and advertisers to lead us astray
- New Scientist