There is nothing about science of fear in this book. Just a summary of recent research on human perception and cognition taken as summaries of other books.

Cannot be called authored piece of work as it only summarizes works of other authors - namely Daniel Kahneman. Nearly no original contribution whatsoever.
Writing a summary is fine but you should not mislead audience - what happened with editors and publishers responsibilities

A dangerous precedent

Misleading title

Angry

Editors and publishers should label products correctly

Some of Gardner's points may seem obvious, but so do most good ideas after they are expressed in a simple way. This book shows ways in which polititians, the media, and big business act to influence public opinion about what is risky. It also provides clues as to how the process might be a result of well meaning individuals.

I also liked Scott Peterson's reading.

Yes. The subject is most interesting and the book is full of references to classical works in the area of risk perception. Great job in connecting ideas from Kannehman, Tvorsky, Slovic, and other researchers in a revealing and instructive narrative.

This specific passage: "...This isn't a failing of the media, so much as it is a reflection of the hardwiring of the human brain that was shaped by environments that bore little resemblance to the world we inhabit. We listen to iPods, read the newspaper, watch television, work on computers, and fly around the world with brains beautifully adapted to picking berries and stalking antilope. The wonder is not we sometimes make mistakes about risks. The wonder is that sometimes we get it right."

Yes, great performance.

Guts and Head: two different perspectives of life

what a disappoint. I thought the author was going to talk about

No.

I guess it was okay considering the boring material.

I would call for a total rewrite or ask author to retitle his book to correctly represent subject discussed.

If you are looking for help with dealing with fear or what the science behind fear, this is not the book to buy. Look elsewhere.

This book is very interesting in terms of its explanation of how fear creeps into our culture and overtakes our better judgment. There are times, however, when Daniel Gardner's approach is a little too science-heavy for me, in that he feels science has the capability of quantifying human experience beyond all other methods of understanding. This simply is not my viewpoint and so found that element very distracting.

Great book, a must listen to, this book really makes you think and look at the media and politicians differently and what they really attempt to do the masses of the people, brain wash and instill fear in order to achieve their goals and not the interest of the masses which they should be doing. People thrust me you need to listen to this book it will change your life for the better when you know what this author has written and observe for yourself and do research you will be a better person and not only hear what is being said but also what is not being said.

This is a well written explanation of why I'm fearful of a great deal of unlikely scenarios and nonchalant about the extraordinarily dangerous. Even more, the author allows me to understand and sometimes reprogram the collective mind in my workplace and at home to better reflect that which is truly important and that which is not.

The author reveals the "man behind the curtain" in this book. I loved it and highly recommend.

Very interesting and recommended for anyone that has a brain.

Many good examples and very clear explanations of great works such an Cahnman and Tversky's works on perception.
At times a bit repetitive and sometimes falls in love with the ideas a bit too much but in general pretty balanced.

I really enjoyed this book. It presented the material in an innovative way that made it easy to understand

My only real complaint is that it comes off as a little too cynical about politicians and big business that peddle in fear. The reference to cognitive dissonance doesn't really mitigate that in my view