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Summary: To learn things that we don't need
Review: America's culture goes though ours lives in each part of the world. This book invites us to think about american paranoia and refuse big lies. It tells about crimes, drugs, science, and other subjects manipulated to serve an ideology. Nobody, none culture, needs this crazy way of life. A big deal !
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Summary: This book should win an award.
Review: I bought this book after I watched the writer on CNN talking about the Egypt airplane accident. He made a great deal of sense, and the book helped me overcome my anxieties about taking airplane trips. That is only one chapter in this excellent book. It is very down to earth, and I was impressed by how many common fears the author called into question.
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Summary: A great book
Review: This was a great read. It crystallized many of the thoughts I'd had about the media and the politicians who use fear in order to push their own agendas: in the case of the media, to get ratings or sell newspapers; in the case of politicians, to get re-elected.Thanks to this book, I can't ever watch the news or listen to a politician the same way again. And that's a good thing. A skeptical voter is an informed voter.
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Summary: A truly enlightening book.
Review: I saw Mr. Glassner on a TV show and thought he made a great deal of sense. The book is enlightening and entertaining at the same time. I agree with many of the comments others have sent to Amazon (not the ones from the gun nuts, they're just stupid since Mr. Glassner gives very definite evidence for everything he says, including about guns). This book relieves a great many fears that we all get from the media and other sources, particularly about diseases, children, and minorities.
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Summary: He has some misplaced fears of his own.
Review: Glassner did a fine job of attacking the numbers and statistics in order to dispel our irrational fears. But while he was at it he did suggest some things we should fear, one of them, guns. It doesn't make sense to me that we should fear an inanimate object but not the person who would use it with ill intent. I just couldn't get past that and so the rest of the book had little credibility.
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Summary: For someone who debunks fear, Glassner seems very fearful.
Review: Having read the introduction, and noted his attention to detail, I was amazed that he suddenly changed his tone on the hot button issue of guns. After admitting that crime rates have gone down, yet crimes are overreported, he turned around and repeated every statement the fearmongers use about guns, as if they were fact. These statements are the only ones in the book not refuted or challanged. His obvious bias taints the quality of the book. I cannot trust his research, if such a well documented topic as firearms was so badly handled due to his personal bias.
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Summary: Read this book!
Review: There are many things to admire about this book. (1) Glassner has done an incredible amount of research, so everything he says is incredibly well documented. (2) He is not some idealist who thinks there is "nothing to fear but fear itself." He separates out the false risks from the real risks. (3) He has an engaging, entertaining writing style. In other words, this book is the opposite of a Chinese dinner. You come away full and satisfied AND it gives you a lot of substinence for weeks to come.
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Summary: An academic who doesn't speak academese.
Review: This book backs up its arguments with statistics, and answers the questions we all have--which of the supposed signs of Armageddon are simply mass-media driven, and which are, finally, well-founded concerns? A great book.
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Summary: Very Uneven Book
Review: This is really two different books. When it comes to exposing the silly fears that are pushed on us through the media, Glassner does a reasonable job, though I frequently wished that he had more concrete facts. The "other book" is when Glassner pushes his own fears, and I found this part as bad as those that he attacks. These discussions are weak and filled with more fears than facts. The first type of discussion fortunately involves much more of the book than the second one, but it significantly detracts from the overall quality of the effort. There are other similar books (indeed strangely enough some with the exact same title and same list of fears) that do at least as good of a job. I had thought that this might serve as a starting point for some class discussions, but the material is too thin for that purpose.
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Summary: An important book
Review: This is a book everybody should read.It is an masterly contribution to counter the many fears, crippling at least a segment of our society. In most instances the fears are out of proportion to real risks. This is particularly true about parents fears regardimg their children. There is this excessive fear about abduction by a stranger,sexual abuse, and just recently the exposure to ultraviolet light, the Staphylococcus strain resistant to antibiotics, Lyme disease and many more as we pointed out in the paper "Parents'worries about Children" by G.B. Stickler et al.Clinical Pediatrics 1991,30(9) %22-528.We all should join in an anti-fear campaign.
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