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Summary: A FACINATING EXPLORATION OF FEAR
Review: Fear is one of our biggest motivators. And seeing how more and more violant our society, and the world, is getting is a result of fears. But what we are afraid of is what in fact we are bringing to the surface--violence. This is the result of ignorance. This book is a interesting read. One of the best analysis of human nature as it relates to fears born out of zealot religious dogma is called, "I Talked To God And He Wants To Talk To You".
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Summary: don't review if you can't spell
Review: I just want readers to know that their reviews are crippled when they don't know the difference between "right" and "write."
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Summary: awesome
Review: A detailed analyses on that which fathers the violence in our Nation. How true his argument becomes when you start to notice the 'fear' that bombards you every day--junk mail, commercials, radio, magazines. It's quite ubiquitous. Travel to Europe or Canada and you'll really notice the difference. See "Bowling For Columbine" as a great follow-up on our nation of FEAR!
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Summary: He is a victim of what he rights about (he's afraid of guns)
Review: Could not finish a book about how we are afraid of all these things for no reason when he puts out misinformation and engages in the very behavior he critisizes.
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Summary: Thought Provoking, Yet Quite Partisan
Review: Glassner offers many interesting ideas of how Americans fixate on the wrong problems, or non-problems for that matter. He correctly points out that the media focuses on an issue and we begin to believe the issue is a real crisis. For example, school violence, child abductions, plane crashes or razor blades in Halloween candy. Although some of these are problems, Glassner provides statistics that prove they are not nearly the problem the media would have you believe. Think about how much we were told about the Y2K bug!However, despite the great examples and statistics, the book is not objective from a political standpoint. Many people agree there is a liberal bias in the media. Glassner is the only person I've heard actually suggest there is a conservative media bias! He often leaves the reader with the idea that conservatives are the only fear mongers. Clearly, both conservatives and liberals use fear to advance their agendas. Although the book is thought provoking, it would have been nice to have an objective representation of fear mongering in American media and politics.
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Summary: Is 6 stars possible???
Review: I am not going to say much, but I just want to reassure anyone who comes across my review that this book is a MUST read for everyone who is interested in any facet of society. Especially if you love sociology or political science, this book will teach you much, as it did me. It outlines many prejudices that are simply untrue about our society and gives you information that you might not know about how the media gives us what they think we want to hear (hate crimes and road rage) and leaves out tons of other much more important information, causing us to fear all the wrong things. BUY THIS BOOK!!!!!! PLEASE!!!! If everyone read this book, I feel confident our society would be a better one!!!!
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Summary: A Medication for Paranoids
Review: The 32nd president of the united states, Franklin Roosevelt, in one of his speeches has said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. It's unquestionable that fears have insurmountable negative effects and they surely can cause harship. A book entitled, The Culture of Fear, by Barry Glassner, professor of sociology at USC, is an important book you need to checkout if you really need an intellectual awareness of how to avoid most America's baseless fears(road rage, crime, drugs, plane crashes...). Glassner's refers to most of our fears as misplaced, overdrawn, unflated, off-base, misbegotton, overblown and so on. The author focuses on the media that are bombarding us everyday with their sensationalistic stories. Glassner calls them, "fear mongers." The writer also exposes the way "fear vendors" profit from our anxieties. I admired the author's emotional tones in the book particularly when he said, "IT IS THE GUN, STUPID!"
This book is highly recommended. Check it out! And once you finish reading it, stand up and advocate, "WOE TO FEAR MONGERS!"
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Summary: All you third rate journalists step aside.
Review: I'll say that even though I don't agree with him on everything,Mr. Glassner clearly makes a serious contribution to discussions of the problems of this country. The elite of this nation have always supported the creation of horrific hobgobolins to scare the wits out of the general population of this country. Whites are the majority of drug users in this country yet blacks are the majority in prison for this offense. As crime (including drug use) has been going down, public fear, at least of street crime, has been going up. Most people get their information about crime not from direct experience but from the mass media in its various forms. More people are being jailed and most politicians have advocated boot camps, trying kids as adults, hiring more police officers and building more prisons. These things have no affect on crime but politicians are rewarded with campaign contributions from companies involved in prison building and other crime-related industries, police officers unions looking to add more officers and voters scared out of their wits but glad to vote for people who promise to allay their fears. Single mothers, most of the time, come from poor households. They have little incentive, given the bleak prospects of their lives and neighborhoods, to avoid behavior which gets them pregnant. They have small access to successful educational and employment opportunities before they get pregnant and it does not change after it. They are more likely to be underemployed, have to work two or three jobs and so on. Their children are likely to have access to far less adequate health care and education. But single moms tend to engage in less self-destructive behavior than do their childless peers. And their children do not turn out appreaciably different than children from two parent households at the same income level. People have far more trouble with addictions to alcohol, tabacco and perscription drugs yet the media focuses primarily on the problem of illegal drugs. The vast majority of perpetrators of anti-semtic acts as well as hate crimes, particularly on college campuses. Yet the media has elevated such obscure cranks as the late Khalil Mohahmmed, whom they claimed was a popular speaker among African American college students, to prominent status. Mohammed, of course, was African American as is Louis Farrakhan. The media have engaged in no comparable focus on white anti-semites among various right wing causes. It is estimated that 40 percent of nursing home patients are malnourished. Yet the media concentrates all their attention on instances of assault and robbery by nursing home workers. These workers tend to grossly underpaid for a very stressful job. He examines other bugaboos. Most of the people who get assaulted or killed on the job are policemen, security gaurds and taxi drivers. Yet the media at one point was caught up in a scare about people who are at risk of wantonly murdering their coworkers. Yet about 5,000 people die and 7 million people are injured on the job in a year, many of them under 18. The media devote scant attention of the oversight problems of OSHA. He has theories as to why these bugaboos catch on so easily. For instance, there is no conclusive evidence that Gulf war syndrome was caused by exposure to chemical and biological materials or whatever. Yet people, at least journalists who should no better, prefer to avoid the abominable conditions under which many of the soldiers lived in Saudi Arabia, with restricted movement and unable to see their families. They were very ill at ease, which is to say they were much susceptible to all sorts of diseases or sicknesses or mental problems. People also don't want to contradict the picture of that war which killed and the effects of which still kills tens of thousands of Iraqis from the lack of repair to civillian infrastructure and access to basic life necessities, all for the purpose of rescuing the tyrants in Kuwait who had been driven out by the tyrant Saddam Hussein. He also has some other interesting cases of bogus or mostly bogus scares: children abandoning their elderly parents, breast implants causing cancer and other diseases (which he says is one of the few legitimate excuses for tort reform), people poisoning the haloween candy they give to children, middle and upper class use of heroin, road rage, political correctness destroying traditional values on campus (my favorite) and, perhaps of some interest given current times, airplane crashes and hazardous conditions on them. Clearly alot of people have a vested interest in avoiding real problems. The solution is to avoid the problem, often focusing on society's powerless and "superfluous" elements like minorities, single and welfare mothers, black crack cocaine users (instead of mostly white powder cocaine users), et. al.
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Summary: AS RELEVANT AS EVER
Review: I bought this book after hearing the author on the radio after the attacks of 9/11. He talked about ways to figure out if something is a real concern, a rumor, or plain old paranoia. It made a lot of sense. The book was written before recent events (obviously), but in a funny way, it has more meaning now. Even today, when it's entirely legitimate to be afraid, certain things are getting blown out of proportion.This book helps you take fear by the horns.
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Summary: short-sighted, hypocritical
Review: It is great to see a direct attack of specific erroneous messages in the news media. However, most of the book is dedicated to using the very tactics that Glassner vilifies. In other words, this work exploits people's fear of conspiracy by blaming the media for all of our social ills (yawn). What's more, he relies on the same alarmist tactics that his scapegoats do....I wonder how many approving readers have researched the sources that HE cites for themselves? Personally, I agree that fear itself signals a deeper problem, and we must be wary of its misdirection. Unfortunately, these ideas are buried in the larger text that falls victim to it's own criticism of irrationality. Here's some more food for thought...Glassner suggests that the news-media is responsible for creating crises....what does he think he's accomplishing with this book? He bases his ENTIRE argument on the presupposition that the Fear he doesn't bother to define is a common American condition. I came away from this book with the perception that news media exaggeration will destroy our society. But seriously folks, America is not a nation of suckers.
This is NOT a scholarly book. Its only cleverness is that it seduces people who are trying to understand their fears, and supplies them with yet another dead end.
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