A review of Barry Glassner’s book The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Well, this is the message our media keeps shoving down our throats, according to claims by Glassner.

In The Culture of Fear, he spins through a lot of different scenarios that we, as Americans, have been trained to fear. For each one, he drags out statistics and a point of view that reduces the boogyman to what it ought to be: an example of ordinary life, a standard deviation, blown out of proportion.

In particular, this becomes an issue because once someone has been reduced to fear, then they are much more easily manipulated.

As with so many other books, this is a concerned and cautionary tale of not allowing ourselves to be tweaked into being afraid.