Culture Of Fear

Book Review:

“The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things”

The Culture of Fear originally published in 1999 by Basic Books in New York, but was updated and enlarged for its tenth anniversary edition in 2010 which features new topics such as the terrorist attacks of September 11,2001, school shootings, and vaccines scares. The author is Barry Glassner a former sociology professor and executive vice provost at the University of Southern California. He claims that many Americans’ concerns and fears are largely unfounded; therefore, his book is focused on the question of why America happens to be a nation where fear is highly captivated in most of our social media and he seeks to find how and why people become fearful to

Within the introduction Glassner points out that “Politicians, journalists, advocacy groups, and marketers continue to blow dangers out of proportion for votes, ratings, donations, and prof- its.” (Glassner, xxxiii) According to Glassner these organizations are advocates of fear who worry society with unnecessary and exaggerated stories in the media and waste billions of dollars in the process.

Chapter one is composed of fear that is found on danger roadways and campuses. For the most part Glassner argues about the strategy that the media use to influence fear on to its viewers, he gives an example of an ABC’s newsmagazine where the program’s co-anchor advocates fear by questioning the viewers about how often they have been bullied on the road either by a simply hunk or a cruse and how this can possibly lead to an aggression but Glassner counter argues by stating that “people honk their horns all the time

Each chapter of the book is focused on a different subject, for example: chapter seven is focused on metaphoric illness; moreover, chapter eight is about plane wrecks and the fear many humans face towards it, not to mention chapter nine is based on his final thoughts where he analyses in detail how professionals user their strategies to “transform something implausible into something believable.” (Glassner, 207) Lastly, chapter ten is about the new fears expected to happen in the upcoming century, which are the same fear he had already touched based on but most recently arising will be terrorism, and war.

In summation, Glassner also talks about how we tend to shake our head and worry about the latest mass shooting while we fail to limit the access to guns to people who shouldn’t have them because they are a danger to society. We also fret over the latest kidnaping of a single toddler while millions of children live in poverty and attend schools were they are not given a good education yet we do nothing to help them. Glassner points out how we pay attention to any atypical tragedy while widespread problems go unaddressed because they catch no