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Risk

  • Imprint: Virgin Books

  • ISBN: 9780753515532

  • Length: 432  Pages

  • Dimensions: 194mm x 27mm x 130mm

  • Weight: 294g

  • RRP: £14.99

Risk

  • The Science and Politics of Fear

We are the safest humans who ever lived - the statistics prove it. And yet the media tells a different story with its warnings and scare stories. How is it possible that anxiety has become the stuff of daily life?

In this ground-breaking, compulsively readable book, Dan Gardner shows how our flawed strategies for perceiving risk influence our lives, often with unforeseen and sometimes-tragic consequences. He throws light on our paranoia about everything from paedophiles to terrorism and reveals how the most significant threats are actually the mundane risks to which we pay little attention.

Speaking to psychologists and scientists, as well as looking at the influence of the media and politicians, Gardner uncovers one of the central puzzles of our time: why are the safest people in history living in a culture of fear?

  • Imprint: Virgin Books

  • ISBN: 9780753515532

  • Length: 432  Pages

  • Dimensions: 194mm x 27mm x 130mm

  • Weight: 294g

  • RRP: £14.99

Reviews

  • Excellent ... Gardner analyses everything from the media's predilection for irrational scare stories to the cynical use of fear by politicians pushing a particular agenda ... A cheery corrective to modern paranoia

    Economist

  • Terrific ... exceptionally good - has the clarity of Malcolm Gladwell

    Evening Standard

  • Enlivening ... a fascinating insight into the peculiar and devastating nature of human fear

    Sunday Telegraph

  • Stimulating ... where writers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Francis Wheen have been content largely to enumerate the errors of less rational men and women, Dan Gardner has collated part of what we need to diagnose the problem

    Independent on Sunday

  • Beautifully observed

    Observer

More from this Author

About the Author

Dan Gardner

Dan Gardner is a columnist and senior writer for the Ottawa Citizen, specializing in criminal justice and other investigative issues. Trained in history and law, Gardner worked as a senior policy adviser to the premier and the minister of education before turning to journalism in 1997. His writing has received numerous awards, including the National Newspaper Award, Amnesty International's Media Award, and others. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and two children.

Dan Gardner

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