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The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things

The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things

List Price: $15.95
Your Price: $10.85
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Americans?
Review: Why Americans are afraid of crime, drugs, teen moms and minorities?
But what a stupid title!!!! The moron who wrote this book should have said: Why whites are afraid of........
Who are the people doing drugs, having babies as teens or minorities but AMERICAN CITIZENS?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Showcases the dangers of blindly accepting media judgements
Review: This handy book brings it all out into the open: Americans and others are being manipulated by a mass media organization that thrives on hype, sensationalism, and poor research. And we allow it to happen because we're largely too lazy to cross-check the facts for ourselves; many people have the attitude that "it must be true, I read it in a book" (or "I saw it on the news") and don't bother to evaluate the data for themselves.

Glassner defuses several classic scare-myths of our times, revealing the hard facts and numbers behind them. Often the results are diametrically opposed to the hype-driven "facts" we've been fed by the media. This is not to say that the media are involved in some sort of conspiracy to defraud the public; instead their reporting is largely driven by the need to sell their product, i.e. the "news" itself. Reporting standards suffer badly when media organizations are solely driven by the need to be the "first to market" with a new story. Or the publisher wants a particular "spin" thrown at a story to match his or her own personal viewpoint. Or the reporter doesn't care. In any case, the result is sensationalized reporting and, frequently, a hysterical public.

The only real flaw apparent in the book is Glassner's apparent hatred for firearms, and even he falls for the gun control myths that the media have perpetuated. Otherwise he does a stellar job; this book should be required reading for reporters as well as public officials, but every citizen can benefit from the basic ideas, which effectively boil down to "don't trust everything you read; learn how to be critical of the data, and look for the ulterior motive."

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Read this book and lose your fears!
Review: This is one of the best books I've read in a long, long time. The author makes you rethink many of your deepest held prejudices and fears. Get it. Read it. Pass it on to your friends.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: another boring anti-gun rant
Review: This book is yet another boring rant by an anti-gun PC telling us how we should think. What arrogance. These guys seem to think that in their enlightened PC minds they have the secrets to the universe. If you want to fear something, fear the guys who write these useless screeds - they are fascists. Good riddance to a worthless read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Chicken soup for those who question
Review: This book is absolutely healing. It puts the multinational companies who play upon general angst and their use of the media into perspective. It also helps the reader to understand the manipulation of statistics which feed the media, and the agenda of media barons. I think if you have a questioning mind and you are feeling down about the way things are today you need this guide to deciphering the messages that we all have shoved down our throats. As a sociology graduate this was like doing a fast track masters. It may just stop your heart from breaking.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The truth is out there!
Review: The Culture of Fear is a book that gives the reader the truth about how the media manipulates society in order to make more customers. It also tells how governments use violence as a means of being elected to office. When I read articles in the Newspaper I now reconsider if what I am reading is the truth. You have a better chance of being hit by lightning than being in a plane crash. When you get off a plane the pilot says, " the safest part of your travel is over". Barry Glassner depicts the way society is tortured with the dishonesty from every single organization out there. Fear is used make money, and the Culture of fear is used to make people aware of what is really out there. Crime, Drugs, Minorities, teen moms, are some of the many topics which Glassner is able to untangle and give actual number and ratios. What the people want in the reality of these things, and Barry give precise, exact, and genuine answer for our problems.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Hit & miss
Review: Glassner has an interesting premise and much of the book is well written and thoroughly researched. However, he does seem to fall into his own trap sometimes, citing a number of things that Americans should fear instead of the bogeymen that he cites. In many of these instances, he provides no supporting data and gives somewhat nonsensical conclusions. The book also jumps around a lot from topic to topic and never seems to tie everything together at the end--as if you were reading a collection of articles with the same theme but on different topics. Overall, the book is fairly well conceived but poorly executed and ultimately unconvincing.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Don't let yourself be fooled
Review: Glassner does an excellent job of exposing the fallacies behind many of the hysterias fostered by the media and government. Judicious use of documented quotes, studies and examples coupled with impeccable logic demonstrate how the American public has been duped into fearing many things. He also discusses how these misplaced fears actually harm society by preventing us from addressing the issues that *really* need to be fixed.

Anyone that writes a negative review of this book has been so thoroughly duped by pro-gun, anti-drug, pro-prison, anti-PC factions in our society that they don't want to see what Glassner is showing them. His logical arguments are difficult to refute and cannot simply be dismissed as liberal agenda.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Should be required reading.
Review: This book should be a must-read for everyone who has worried about road rage, airplane crashes, or school shootings. It uses solid facts and statistics to show how we as a society are exploited by advertisers, media, politicians, and special interest groups to fear the wrong things, things that just don't pose that big a threat. In exchange, we buy products we don't need to make us feel safer, vote for politicians out of a knee-jerk reaction, are kept glued to the nightly news, buy newsmagazines and newspapers with lurid headlines, and pass unnecessary, cumbersome laws. At the same time, our attention on these fears diverts us from examining more difficult societal issues, such as gun control, the state of our educational system, poverty, and overcrowded prisons, and frees us from having to share the responsibilities for these problems. The chapters on our overblown fears regarding school shootings, single motherhood, and black men are particularly enlightening. Unless you enjoy being manipulated, this book will help you recognize fear mongering for what it really is, closely examine and perhaps dismiss your prejudices, and rationally and skeptically evaluate new situations without having your emotions played like a fiddle. In this media-saturated society, it should be required reading.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Good arguments but inherently obvious
Review: The "Culture of Fear" is a wide-ranging book that tackles a number of cultural phenomena, mostly media-generated, that "threaten" Americans in some way. The book is fairly fluid and generally cogently argued, with some fine chapters on teen-age pregnancy, vaccination, and psuedoillnesses, and some more questionable chapters on topics such as repressed memory psychology (the dangers of which Dr. Glassner dismisses surprisingly quickly). Dr. Glassner does an excellent job of relaying how dangerous pseudoexperts are (a good example of this, which is not discussed in his book, is the effect of a minute number of scientists, many not even virologists, on HIV and AIDS policy in South Africa, where essential measures are being subverted by President Mbeki because he has been influenced by these individuals). The main problem with this book (and, although I agree that Dr. Glassner's views on socioeconomic policy and guns do encroach on his arguments a bit too often, I don't believe these opinions take away from his most rationally argued points) is that much of it is intuitively obvious - a problem I have had with a great deal of sociological research. I have never felt threatened or heard of others threatened by many of the issues he discusses, such as road rage, the abandonment of the elderly, vaccinations, plane crashes, etc., and not because I haven't heard about them from numerous media sources, but from personal experience and from a basic skepticism. As I was reading, I kept feeling that much of the material Dr. Glassner was discussing was needed as filler for a discussion of a few truly important topics and quickly grew bored. Strong arguments lose much of their weight when the subject of argument is a non-issue.


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