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

by Barry Glassner

In this eye-opening examination of a pathology that has swept the country, the noted sociologist Barry Glassner reveals why Americans are burdened with overblown fears. He exposes the people and organizations that manipulate our perceptions and profit from our anxieties: politicians who win elections by heightening concerns about crime and drug use even as both are declining; advocacy groups that raise money by exaggerating the prevalence of particular diseases; TV news-magazines that monger a new scare every week to garner ratings.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Politics, Psychology, History, Social Science, Science

210 pages, Paperback

First published May 2, 1999

About the author

Barry Glassner has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, and has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. A professor of sociology at USC, Glassner lives in Los Angeles. His most recent book is THE GOSPEL OF FOOD: Everything You Think You Know About Food Is Wrong.

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't even get through this book. The information was poorly organized and it just wasn't very good reading. It was recommended on Michael Moore's website a while back.

The premise of the book sounded interesting to me and Michael Moore's heart is in the right place, but the book is just utter rubbish. It's not for serious thinkers who are looking for something insightful and revealing about US culture.

[Jessaka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, now I know that my iPhone and my kindle will not give me cancer if I hold them up to my face. I was chancing it anyway.

This book was wonderful. I learned so much that I cannot even begin to Tell you all.

Very few people have died in airplane accidents, but thousands of people die in the workforce every year because no 1 goes and checks out the dangers of the jobs. What jobs, I don't remember.

Very few catholic priest are pedofiles. And I mean very few. Of course, people can say, they just didn't get caught. I say no menastic of any order should ever have to be CELIBATE. That is insane. And, I do not believe that we have an insane GOD.

The show host on TV as well as the news media always make the news sensational. This is criminal. But Fear stories always sell more Papers.

I had my own experience with news men. 1 came to our book group to Interview us, all elderly women. He asked us if we minded swear words in books, and 1 of us said no. The newspaper had turned us all into elderly floozies. So there you go.

[Emma Sea · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book itself hasn't dated as much as I expected. While the discussion is still sketchy and simplistic it's true these same topics are still being fearmongered: child abduction, the medicalisation of life, race, youth.

However what I really wanted to read was the new chapter on the post 9/11 world. Sadly this is as shallow as the original book. There's a great quote from Dan Rather on page 234, regarding how, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, to question government became tantamount to treason:

"One finds oneself saying, 'I know the right questions [to ask the Bush administration], but you know what? This is not exactly the right time to ask it.'"

Glassner doesn't discuss this any further, and yet the defining characteristic of the 2000s was how consumers being parted from their dollars by media-highlighted fears segued into citizens being parted from their rights by government-highlighted fears.

Our Prime Minister just pulled this exact crap on Kiwis this week. He's trying to get a bill passed to allow greater surveillance over NZ citizens, and now claims that New Zealanders are being trained by al-Quaeda in Yemen. To which Kiwis universally say, "Hahahahahahahaha," while we still sit and watch this legislation get passed.

So, I think the book (as always) raises interesting ideas,but doesn't take them anywhere. An introduction to the topic, rather than a discussion on it.

[Books Ring Mah Bell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tell me something I don't know. The media sensationalizes whatever they can for ratings and statistics can be twisted to show whatever someone wants them to show.

Consider the source when you get your info. Who funds them? What do they have to gain? Is there another way to read a statistic? Then, take your Paxil and crawl back into your basement bunker with your guns.

[Carrie Poppy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good!

[Ensiform · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thesis of this thoroughly researched and lucidly written book is that the media trumpets scares that are not based in reality, created with ulterior or subconscious motives to distract the public from real and much more difficult to face problems. Faceless villains in nursing homes are killing our grandparents; we don’t have to think about the troubling conditions and egregiously low funding we set aside for our oldest and most vulnerable citizens. We should worry about nuts shooting up the workplace, not downsizing and benefit cuts. We can shake our heads at "crazy" road rage drivers and not the very real epidemic of drunk driving. There are cold teen predators ready to kill us all, turned into ultra-violent murderers from video games; the problem can't possibly be the prevalence of and easy access to firearms, or the lack of funding for counseling, early nutrition, or Head Start programs. Crack and teen mothers are characterized as the cause of inner city problems, not wealth disparity and de facto segregation of our inner cities. It is always the evil crazy individual, not the larger social evil. It's easy to scapegoat but a lot harder to address cultural problems in which we are all complicit. We like to spend as little as possible to remove symptoms, and almost nothing to address the cause of problems; the over-prescription of ADHD medicine being a prime example. Glassner calls out the media for glorifying self-styled but uninformed “experts,” writing alarmist and lurid pieces on scare stories, using anecdotes as evidence, and inflating isolated incidents into an disquieting, but nonexistent trend.

The importance of this misdirection and obfuscation is more than just making the public believe that crack and unwed mothers are prime evils in society. Not facing the real problems is causing untold damage to the fabric in our society by funneling much-needed money into fighting chimeras like unsafe air travel and made-up diseases. At the end of the book he muses, “Will it take an event comparable to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to convince us that we must join together as a nation and tackle these problems?” In three years, that tragic event would happen, but sadly, the media remains as obstinate and destructive as ever.

[Bryan Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review is about fear.  Specifically, about stupid fears.  Those are not realistic concerns about ill health, economic stress, or living in a war zone. Instead, these  fears are either literally fantastic, made up of delusions, or, while based on tiny grains of truth, have been blown far out of proportion into large-scale cultural terrors.

The occasion isn't anything in current events.  It's not about Trump or wars or opioid deaths.  Instead, it's because I finished reading Barry Glassner's very good The Culture of Fear (first published 2000). It was good fodder for my ongoing critique of tv news. Here I'll summarize highlights, then speculate about the future and education's role.

tl;dr - American news media and politicians love terrifying us.  They'll probably keep doing it.  Education needs to step up to help mitigate these stupid fears.

Glassner wrote his book in the 1990s, so the first edition is very much an artifact of the time, with the pre-dot-bomb web being new-ish and exciting and the Clintons-Gingrich push for mass incarceration.  Some of the fears he addresses are outdated now, like pre-9-11 panics over air safety.

Otherwise, Culture of Fear feels very current.  It addresses a series of panics that were at best exaggerated and at worst cynical ploys deployed for monetary gain or political ends by news media and political figures: crime, from violent crime to drugs; children in danger; mothers misbehaving;  black men being terrifying; medical concerns so strange and removed from evidence that Glassner labels them "metaphoric illnesses."  In fact violent crime experienced an extraordinary and very welcome decline throughout the 1990s, most children are safe, and most likely to be endangered by their families, and so on.  These are stories told in defiance of statistics, bits of horror pried loose from a less horrific context to win eyeballs and to sell ads.

One of my favorite Gothic TIME magazine covers.

Glassner offers a battery of reasons why we should be concerned about such fake fears.  For one, some can lead to very real harm, as when fake medical panics, like the very stupid anti-vax movement, lead to real world sickness (175).  For another, they serve as distractions from closely related issues, as when we learn more about people going postal and less about workplace safety (28).  Similarly, Glassner sees the protracted debates over a so-far unproven Gulf War Syndrome as drawing attention from criticizing the conduct of the first Gulf War itself (158).  Such fears can fruitlessly draw down political energies, as when government and corporate time was spend exploring hypothetical air safety issues when they could have gone to mitigating the far, far more dangerous, and very real, death, injury, and damage causes by car crashes (198) .  They can also lead to bad policy, as when the hilariously stupid TIME magazine cyberporn panic helped drive the equally stupid Communications Decency Act (1996).

The cumulative effects of being immersed in stupid fears can help convince us we live in a world more terrifying than it really is, what some researchers have called mean world syndrome (44).  This can lead to deranged politics, as when Trump builds a presidency on largely fantastical fears of immigrants committing crimes.  Mean world can also feed on itself; some people may become so scared they spend more time at home watching tv news, which then terrorizes them even more (45).

The storytelling aspect interests me.  Culture of Fear argues that media and political fear-mongering teaches consumers and voters to see problems in terms of stories about heroic individuals, rather than about social or political factors.  The contexts get set aside, replaced with more relatable tales of villainous criminals and virtuous victims, which Glassner calls "neurologizing social problems" (217). There is also a curious, quietly conservative politics of the family involved.  Such fears emphasize stranger danger, which is actually statistically very rare.  Instead, they minimize the far more likely source of harm most American face: our family members (31).

On top of those problems, many of these mongered fears can further anti-black racism.  Throughout Culture of Fear the author reminds us how many of these narratives turn on scary black men threatening good white people, usually women.  Chapter 5 is all about how media and politicians create black men as figures of terror.

Glassner adds some interesting points about why these particular fears are so popular.  One is the way fake fears reveal cultural anxieties, much as horror stories do (208). Another is the idea that, for journalism, media leaders can shape content based on their own worldview, or: "news is what happens to your editors."  By that he means "editors - and their bosses... [and] their families, friends, and business associates"(201). Hence, for example, the appeal of stories about air travel, since those demographics are more likely to fly.  Hence the focus on suburban terror, since these populations are more likely to live there.

The books doesn't always sit well with me, possibly because of the passage of time. It sees 1990s-era stories of pedophile priests as overblown, which misses the way clerical sex abuse actually became a very established and significant fact (35ff).  Glassner is also quite fair and balanced in his critique of news media, more generous than I am, if I can lift a slogan from perhaps America's most noteworthy fearmonger, Fox News.  He takes care throughout the book to note when journalists actually reverse course and either share information about realistic fears, or instead critique stupid fear-mongering from politicians and other media outlets (xxx, for example). I find all too few examples of this laudable style.

But what really ratcheted up the power of Culture of Fear is that everything I've described above was in the 2000 edition.  Glassner went on to issue a second edition in 2009, which showed these fake fears persisting and getting worse.  An extra chapter dwells, unsurprisingly, on the war on terror, reminding 2019's reader of how the Bush administration used fears ranging from exaggerated to fictional for political gain.  Since 2000 several new dreads appeared, including fears of mold and environmental illnesses (229).

Is the culture of fear likely to continue?  I fear (see what I did there) that it will, at least in the United States.  Our politics clearly adore fear, notably from the Trump administration and its emphasis on immigrant-driven carnage.  Our news media continue to worship at the altar of "if it bleeds, it leads."

In fact, as I started writing this post yesterday, I clicked to CNN.com to see if I could find some examples of their beloved scare-mongering.  Right away I found a splendidly shrieking example right on their front page:



Please note that that screen capture is of the entire first screen, from side to side, eating up every pixel of that extremely valuable real estate.  Of all the stories CNN could purvey, from climate change to AI, they choose another outlier, a Gothic tale that has little to do with lived reality.

Impressed by this, I scrolled down the CNN main page, thinking that "below the fold" might appear actual news.  Instead, the second screen carried on with the parent-killing first:



Suspects, media, even ghosts.  Note the fiery if not bloody red font for the sheriff's video.

Remember that CNN is the opposite of a fringe news service.  Between Fox and MSNBC it occupies a neutral, middle ground.  It is, putatively, the sober center.  And it simply adores scaring the hell out of us.

So yes, I think it's likely this trend can be simply extrapolated into the future.  Other trends will intersect with and amplify it.  Personalization, for example, should help target our fears more precisely, aided by AI.  Watch for AR/VR/MR instances of stupid fears.

What does the likelihood of even more stupid fear-mongering mean for education?  It simply means, as I said years ago, we have to teach people to resist this stuff.  In our quest to teach digital literacy we should encourage students - of all ages - to avoid tv news, or to sample it judiciously, with great skepticism.  We should assist them in recognizing when politicians fire up fear campaigns based on poor facts.

Many educators already do some form of this.  But it's easy not to.  Social media and mobile devices are far sexier than tv news.  The renaissance in tv storytelling has cast the entire television enterprise in a better light, I think.  And Americans do have this habit of romanticizing old technology in the face of the new.  It takes some effort to remember to subject it to scrutiny.  And when it comes to politics, well, politicians peddle terror because it often works.

If Glassner is right about the negative impacts of such fear - the misdirection of resources, the creation of bad policy, the encouragement of mean world syndrome, the furtherance of racism - the promulgation of real damage - then educators need to take steps to instill a critical stance among students that dismantles the structures of stupid fears.

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review title: Fear of flying

Glassner wrote this timely book nearly 20 years ago, and the decades since have proven that rather than correcting our fear of flying (the act of transport by airplane, not the book of that name which is about.... something else) we have confirmed our fear of the wrong things. He takes a sociologist's view of the causes and methods of misguided fear, using logic and statistics to battle bad logic and misused statistics.

What are the wrong things we feared in the long ago time of the 20th century? I can remember these stories and how they became buzzwords and catchphrases that represented what seemed at the time legitimate concerns, but looking back today seem overblown or indeed forgotten: road rage, crack babies, razor blades in Halloween treats, missing kids on milk cartons, satanic daycare centers, moms killing kids (and Lorena Bobbitt whacking her husband with a kitchen knife), kids raising kids, the crack epidemic overwhelming society, the heroin epidemic overwhelming society, and, yes, fear of flying because of poor oversight, cheap aircraft parts, and (before 9/11) phantom Islamic terrorism. All of these catch phrases (and several other fears that Glassner documents) represent things that really did happen, but did not swamp our institutions with the apocalyptic disasters predicted or reported as certainties by the media. A sign of how much has changed in the passage of two decades, Glassner cites newspapers, print magazines, and TV network broadcasts like "20/20" and "60 Minutes"; the internet as a source of news for a meaningful proportion of Americans remains just over the horizon, although he does reference it as a source of "cyberporn".

Fear is driven by money and power, writes Glassner: "The short answer to why Americans harbor so many misbegotten fears is that immense power and money await those who tap into our moral insecurities and supply us with symbolic substitutes." (p. xxviii) these "misbegotten" fears direct our attention away from real problems that are beyond our capacity to solve and give us an easy scapegoat. For example, Road rage killed 200 people versus 17,000 killed by drunk drivers in the year Glassner cited, yet after years of success in reducing drunk-driving fatalities by organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, by the late 1990s surveys showed people were more concerned about road rage and funding for drunk-driving campaigns had declined. If we can't stop drunk drivers from killing 17,000, maybe we can stop those 200 from dying of road rage!

Another and amazingly prescient example Glassner uses is the supposed heroin and crack epidemics. The media reported surveys showing that nearly 25% of 12 year olds were using cocaine, heroin or LSD (p. 142) But the surveys had asked 12 year olds to speculate how many of their friends might be using and that is the number that was reported, creating a perception of exploding drug usage among Middle schoolers when in fact real data showed that hard drug use was declining 17% that year. As a result of the misguided fear, 99% of drug prevention funding went to illegal drugs--while in the same year over half of all drug-related deaths were from misuse of legal prescription drugs. While billions of taxpayer money was spent increasing law enforcement and prison space to catch and punish illegal drug users, no one paid attention to the real problem we should have feared. And now we pay the price for our misguided fear and misdirected focus of power and money; 115 Americans die every day (33,000 in 2015) from abuse of opioids, most from legal prescription drugs.

Another timely fear that Glassner addresses is school shootings, which yes, did occur in the 1980s and 1990s before Columbine, Sandy Hook, Florida, and now Texas. This is such an emotionally charged topic that it is hard to look at the numbers, but Glassner points out that schools then were safer than most places kids spent time, including homes where they were more likely to be physically, sexually, and emotionally abused by relatives than shot at in school. I don't have comparable statistics for 2018 but I would expect the same holds true, despite an article I saw recently which said that American schools were more dangerous than military service in Afghanistan, based on the number of deaths in each venue. But the statistics are obviously misused here; there are millions of kids in school every day, there are only 10s of thousands of soldiers in combat zones in any given day. On a per student basis, of course schools are safer.

Not only are the statistics misused, but the blame is focused on the wrong thing, Glassner writes. The 1990s killers were perpetrated by teen "superpredators" set to overwhelm our schools and bred by video games, media violence, moral decay, removal of the Bible from schools, choose your cause. But Glassner noted then that this blaming redirected attention away from a more proximate cause: access to guns that enable mass shootings. This combination is practically ripped from today's headlines. Now as then, the power and money are in the hands of the gun lobby and politicians who don't have the will to take action to address the proximate cause, so we continue to try to identify the "bad guy" gene (at greater risk to individual liberty), arm teachers in classrooms, and spend billions in turning schools into locked-down prisons, all while teachers can't get books or a living wage. Fearing the wrong thing results in addressing the wrong problems with the wrong solutions, leaving the real fears unattended until they become epidemics.

Glassner's analysis is not always as clear and timely as these examples, and readers won't find all of them useful or believable. In some ways we have come some distance from two decades ago. We no longer look for satanic rituals in day care centers on the basis of bogus regression therapy. Drunk driving fatalities for 2016 were just over 10,000, down about 33% in the last three decades. Crack babies and superpredator teens have not overrun our medical and educational capacities. In one key way, however, we are in a more precarious situation that puts us at higher risk for misguided fear than we were in 1999: the internet today now is the main source of news for most Americans, and those sources are splintered along all sorts of vectors: political parties and doctrines, religious beliefs, economic levels, geographical boundaries, conspiracy theories. News is no longer broadcast, it is multicast, targeted, shaped into facts and "alternative facts" depending on the vector of your source. Instead of a societal concensus to identify irrational fears and squash them, each vector acts as an echo chamber to repeat and amplify them. So while Glassner is able to report that the vaccination scare of his day (the childhood DPT vaccine kills kids) was happily headed off by the broadcast media and federal government in a success story of combating the irrational, today's antivaccination belief that vaccinations cause autism is reinforced by the media echo chambers of multiple "anti-vaxxer" websites and politicians, and refuses to die in the face of scientific evidence.

Glassner provides footnotes for all his sources and quotes, to support more research. The theory behind the causes of misguided fears and how to address them could have been more systematically developed. The book is just over 200 pages so another 20 or so to summarize and develop a theoretical basis would have been well spent. But Glassner is a socialogist, not a historian, philosopher, theologian, or political theorist, so he sticks with what he knows, and does it well.

[Dennis D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a terrific non-fiction book about how special interests, news organizations, and the government manipulate the populace through fear tactics. Researching social epidemics such as airline safety, school violence and road rage (among many others), Glassner pretty effectively illustrates how we are fed a diet of fear by trumped up "experts," and people who have a stake in keeping us afraid. This second situ is what was appalling to me. If your livelihood is consulting and giving speeches about crack babies, OF COURSE you're going to go on 60 Minutes or NBC News or some local station to trumpet the scourge, danger and epidemic of crack babies.

My wife read this book right after I did, and we took to announcing "The Culture" anytime we heard one of the tell-tale teasers as an intro or outro to a TV show:

Voice-over: "Coming up at 11, Mexican immigrants are being issued handguns and cocaine, and then bussed right to your child's school playground. FIND OUT WHY YOUR CITY COUNCIL IS DOING NOTHING ABOUT IT."

Us: "Culture of fear, baby."

Now that I've read this book, I'm much more attuned to the phenomenon. Although the examples in the book are still dead-on accurate (nothing's come to light since publication that validates the dire warnings), the book was written in 1999 or so, so some of the examples are now a little dated. I'd love to see Glassner update his premise to include post 9/11 America, especially the run-up to the Iraq war.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give this 4 stars not because it was necessarily super well-written, though it was clear and concise, but because I thought the subject matter was remarkable.

I would have never, ever picked this up as my own volition. Ever. Ever, ever, ever. These types of books never appeal to me. However, my older brother is very into economics, social studies, etc. etc. and he wanted me to read this. I found the abridged audio version, which is what I am reviewing and figured I could handle dedicating 4 days of my commute to listening to this book and make my brother happy.

Turns out, I was completely enthralled and a little freaked out. I always assume the media is manipulating me but I didn't realize how much fear sells. I really enjoyed the audiobook and I will probably check out the other book my brother recommended Risk: the Science and Politics of Fear since he said he liked that one even more.

[Ietrio · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one carefully engineered book. And I appreciate this, as I am left with the impression that most non-fiction books are simply written on impulse.

Glassner starts with "The Culture of Fear". So far so good. Than he starts pushing towards his set of chosen fears. So by now I am intrigued: the collectivist mind of Glassner can't show him he is doing the exact same thing he started by criticizing?

Later it becomes obvious Glassner has his own axes to grind. And the book is simply virtue signaling: Glassner and others like him, know "the real" issues. Sadly, it is the exact same mechanism through which those who believe in the reptilian invasion are certain. And Furedi's sources are such experts as Malcolm Gladwell.

Still, it would be a so and so book. But a more careful examination, Glassner, precisely like the ones he criticizes, he cares about pushing his fears above the other fears. This way a politician that will push legislation that will imprison hundreds of thousands might be a victim, and the car alarm salesman who has access to only thousands of individuals is the "true" cause. And that is deliberate, because he wants laws to ban "the true" issues. Of course that the trader is at fault like in any of the 2000 years of Christianity. Profit is evil, Glassner needs more power.

[T. Rudacille · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love the premise of this book: Taking popular media scare tactics and debunking them with facts, both statistical and otherwise. However, the execution of this premise was lacking and the political bias was obvious. In regards to the latter, I am in agreement with Glassner but still found it disconcerting to see fingers pointed at guns, government, and other metaphorical boogey-men, when he is supposed to be dismantling the fear, if you will, not advocating his political agenda.

In the beginning of the book, Glassner writes that someone asked him once what they should be afraid of. After reading this book, my guess is that we are not supposed to be afraid of anything at all; everything from road-rage killings to pedophile neighbors is just a scare tactic created and perpetuated by the media so we'll support (and maybe even ask for) authoritative, big-brother-is-watching policies that will make us feel secure in this actually very safe and happy world.

So basically... we have nothing to fear but fear, itself. Trite? Unrealistic? Yeah, I know. Glassner apparently doesn't.

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommend...especially if 1999 was a year of significance to you.

Re-reading it now, nearly 20 years later (as we are a people owned by our technology), it's a mind blower!

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had heard good things about this book, and I was looking forward to reading it because I agree with the overall notion that Americans live in a "culture of fear." But I should have known when the introduction was by Michael Moore that I was in for something different than I expected. Unfortunately, I have to agree with most of the negative reviews for this book. While Glassner presents some excellent observations and analysis about the hyperbole and exaggerations and misdirections and flat out misinformation found in some of the media, he sadly is unable to avoid falling into some of the same traps himself when he is making the points he wants to make. As I've gotten older, I've found that I sometimes want to seek out different points of view from my own so I can know where others are coming from. But Glassner uses the same rhetorical tricks (i.e. "blood bath" to refer to a school shooting--while those deaths were tragic, they don't compare to other massacres of hundreds or thousands where we use that term to indicate the amount of blood that was literally spilt) and statistical manipulation (i.e. using statements like "six times..." without providing the actual numbers--exactly what he accuses other journalists of doing) in making some of his arguments that he accuses others of in making theirs. He also occasionally resorts to "straw man" arguments (i.e. conservatives want to see abusive, drug-dealing, criminal fathers in homes rather than no fathers at all--that is absolutely NOT what people are talking about when they are talking about the problem of fatherlessness). I don't know why editors didn't say something about all of this; maybe they got so caught up in the book that they didn't notice, or they just want to sell it--who knows. Part of me wonders if Glassner would actually be pleased that I caught these things, because it means that his overall point got through about being more wary of consuming media rhetoric at face value, but I kind of doubt it.
The book also has the problem, as many other reviewers of noted, of being a "one note solution" kind of book--i.e. everything is about too many guns. It's almost like the title of the book should have been "Why Americans Should be Afraid of Guns--and that's pretty much it." In fact, that leads to a second problem, which is that he picks apart all the things that "conservatives" (in his mind) are "afraid" of and basically tries to say that these things are no problem at all and we shouldn't be worried about them in the least. Again, pretty much the only thing Americans really need to be concerned about is guns. In other words, just because "crack babies" may not be as rampant a problem as some fear mongers may have initially proposed, that doesn't mean that there isn't a problem at all, which is the tone that Glassner conveys often throughout the book. Just let everyone do drugs, let the teenagers get pregnant, let men roam around having babies and not taking responsibility for them, etc.--it's no problem at all. The only thing we really need to do anything about is guns.
Well, that's probably more than I needed to write about this book. Basically, I would say that if you want to read this book (which I'm not saying you shouldn't, because Glassner does have some really worthwhile observations about scare tactics and fear mongering in the media), you should probably plan on reading Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind" immediately afterward.

[Paul Schulzetenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glassner's book has a provocative title, and it's filled with well-researched numbers and a clear view of reality. It's also got a terse but powerful style that reads quickly, despite being packed full of statistics and meticulous research. As a result, Glassner is convincing when he points out that fear is a powerful force, oversold by our culture to point us at the wrong problems. It's also a salient point that misallocation of fear causing us to spend a ridiculous amount of resources trying to solve the wrong problems.

However, the book doesn't do a great job of pointing out alternatives. This ends up being "Look, this is a problem that exists!" book -- a fact that is unintentionally hilarious when compared to the thesis of the book. There's no concrete suggestions about how to combat this culture of fear. Should we be researching further into this phenomenon? Being more selective with our media consumption? Should Americans simply fearing fewer things or different things, or fear the same things but in different proportions? Is fear the mind-killer or what?

It doesn't help that the book was published one year too early, in 2000. The post-9/11 culture of fear is obsessed with different issues. The fears that the book covers are mostly domestic, and many of them feel somewhat quaint. Some of the book reads "Awww, I remember when that was a real fear we had as a nation!" We still naively fear the wrong things, but they're different wrong things than the book points out. It's not something that the author could have predicted, but it does certainly lessen the book's impact.

[Michael Ball · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm always looking for new and interesting topics to read about and so I thought this book would be something worth checking out. I was interested in the author's take regarding fear in society, something I believe runs prevalent throughout the history of mankind.

While I recall reading a bit about that topic, what I soon found is what I believe the book to be about: a soapbox for a person in direct opposition to firearm ownership in America. As a firearm advocate, I couldn't help but feel offended in the manner the author spoke of gun owners in America. Either we're gun crazed fanatics or we're a caste of the frightened trying to puff out our chests by owning firearms.

Once he hit this point in the book, the author ran with it, making less than intelligent comments in a manner that would seem as being posterized in a cold, educated tone. What I found, is that the author displayed himself as everything wrong in a topic that he was both unfamiliar with (as to the true psyche of the millions of gun owners in America) and also had an obvious bias about.

From that point he lost all credibility in my eyes. The only reason I finished the book, begrudgingly, is because I hate not finishing a book once I've started it.

[Jerry · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not worth the read. Objectivity is the first casualty this bizarre treatise exposing misplaced fear. That is followed in turn by absence of reason. Glassner addresses his pet, mainly Conservative, taboos and slants his arguments to fit his prejudices. To highlight a couple, Glassner twists himself into a pretzel to make Louis Farrakhan appear not as the anti-Semite he is but rather is to be excused for hateful speech against Jews because of their whiteness and therefore their DNA derived racism. Huh? Teenage pregnancies and unwed Mothers, according to Glassner, get bad press when all the bad press should go to the fathers. Do that and the problem disappears. Glassner slams Americans for not embracing science. I'll give him a pass on the current skepticism on the science behind handling COVID where the 'science' is at best muddled because the revised version of this 'classic' was already in the market by the time the pandemic hit. But I am confused about his decision to ignore the bad science on the most controversial global issue of the past 20+ years - the environment. Crickets. Maybe it's because he couldn't get an interview with the foremost spokesperson - Greta Thunberg.

[Clinton · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Culture of Fear truly and aggressively insinuates that America is trapped in a culture that feeds off fear mongering by corporations, public officials, experts and mostly media personnel. Glassner brightly examines the phenomenon of fear mongering, which ultimately it creates a shallow society. Americans are brainwashed by the information provided by the media, which instinctively and distinguishably misinforms and misguides Americans. Yet, the blame doesn’t stop at the media; public officials are just as responsible by injecting unnecessary comments subject to scare the public. Corporations entice consumers to buy this and that in order for them to earn profits at the expense of the public’s fears. Fears are a means of controlling the general public by subjugating them in a direction that the media or public officials perceive appropriate. These fears would include monster moms, exaggerated number of plane crashes, road rage, and drug driven children. Overall, it is an excellent book, but at times, Glassner does provide a plethora of examples that seems to be overkill.

[Amyelyse · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really opened my eyes to the manipulations of the media, and the politicians. The whole point is "Be afraid, give us money" which my BF and I say whenever we see it happening.

If you watched "Bowling for Columbine", He sites this books and suggests it, and when speaking to Marylin Manson if you had a moment of "Holy crap he has a brain," or any minor epiphany because of the points that come up in that interview segment in the movie, then you need to read this book.



Actually everyone who doesn't want to be a sheep to the media and wants to break free of the fears of modern consumerism needs to read this book.

If you are Happy doing what they tell you to do and like being a sheep, then you'll WANT to skip it, but need to read it more than everyone.

[Stephanie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only got through a little more than half this book before the skimming began. Glassner's Gospel of Food is dead-on; he has his finger on the pulse of food/diet issues in America. But this? Culture of Fear sidles up to the progressive/social justice/welfare warriors of our time leaving conservative gun-owning hard-workers in its wake. Glassner wholly devalues a Christian ethic and fails to see the need to return to a set standard of godly morals in our society. The foundation of fear he purports lacks the solid undergirding of ours within a Christian worldview. Not a recommended read for conservatives.

[Christine Hernando · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bias, bias, bias

Is it possible for anyone to write a book about this topic without including their own political bias? This book is outdated to start and “updating” it for the Trump era failed to account for the insane fear mongering perpetrated by the left. I am not saying they are the only ones, but this book would have you believe that only Trump and his supporters are guilty of this. Much of the information in this book is no longer relevant and it failed to include much needed information that would both help explain and heal the division in our nation. Shame on you, Mr. Glassner for being part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

[Lauren Wilbor · Rating 1 out of 5]

Finally finished this terrible book. The description made it seem like this would be a book on the government and media using fear to control Americans but instead it was disproving case studies that do not matter in the slightest. Do I care about fear mongering over the safety of breast implants? Absolutely not and what a waste of my time to even read words on that. This seems like partially my fault as I should’ve just taken a second longer to flip through the pages at the bookstore but overall cannot stress how much I hated this book and how much it would be a waste of your time to read it

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is all about how modern day fears are stoked by the media. Although I knew much of the big ideas being brought forward in this book, I appreciated the concrete facts which backed up the propositions. Unfortunately I was reading a copy published in 1999, and there is a newer version that came out around 2010. My guess is that much of the text is the same, but that many of the examples come from more current times. I would also imagine that the post-9/11 world has made a big impact on our fears. What was interesting was just how relevant all these insights are today, in spite being researched and written 20 years ago. If you are like me and have family members who seem to be fearful of everything in the world these days, this book will provide you with lots of good information with which to counter those fears.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read, reassuring on many counts. It's ok to be fearful, but Glassner points out many ways in which the media & all manner of special interests befuddle their audience & create / exaggerate dangers.

Plenty of statistics to back up his points and 46 pages of notes. Also a nice reading group guide - why don't reading groups cover more books like this instead of the latest Grisham?

In the final thoughts section, Glassner presents a valid comparison to the hysteria resulting from Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" broadcast.

I liked his conclusion, "we can choose to... combat serious dangers that threaten large numbers of people. At election time we can choose candidates that proffer programs rather than scares. Or we can go on believing in Martian Invaders."

There is a more recent edition, but this was published in 1999. These scares are not unique to one side of the political spectrum, but this book is especially pertinent to our current political climate.

[Laurie · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this book is the 10th anniversary edition of the original book that was published in around 2000. This updated edition is now ten years old. The original text is presented in original form and the update is added at the end. I confess I didn’t read the whole thing because I think I read it when it first came out or at least something very like it. So it was familiar ground and disconcerting to read examples from 1994 in 2019. That said, if one is unfamiliar with how fear can be promoted by inept or sensational reporting and unscrupulous public fixtures it is instructive to say the least.

[Kacey Lundgren · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked that this book broke down all of their examples. This is what the news media reported. This is what actually happened. I enjoyed reading that. However, I felt like the book lacked the critical piece that comes after: what do I do now? How do I find news that is not biased and gaslighting? What news sites should I read? If I don’t have access to the “this is what actually happened” then how do I know if this article is honest or just stoking up fear? I guess being aware that it happens is the first step. So in that regard, I’m glad I read this book.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I have to read it for class then it absolutely counts for my Goodreads thank you very much

[Mallory · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would be interested to see how this book would be updated given that it's almost 20 years old. Very provocative concept. Makes me want to read so much deeper into news sources.

[Valerie Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I had read this 10 years ago when I first queued it; so much is stale (school shootings and pandemics aren't real fears, right??). But so much is still so worthy of remembering: by focusing on sensational fears in the press, Americans ignore the major, real problems of poverty, racism, and wide availability of guns.

[Jerry Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book less interesting as it went on. I think this is because Glassner is making essentially the same point, albeit with well written prose, over and over again with a number of different fears to illustrate his point.

All of this is spot on, but I couldn't help feeling that he was rather stating the obvious. Personally I have a pet peeve when people blame anything on some vague force known as "the media". Problem with society? Oh, it's the media. Soccer violence? Must stem from the media. It's lazy thinking and, to his credit, Glassner doesn't resort to such generalist platitudes - he is much more specific. However the refrain is essentially the same - it's the media's job to hype stuff up, quote random statistics and generally put the fear of god into us all for the sake of a good story.

We know that. It is a source of frustration to me that so many of us fail to employ any critical thinking at all when we view news or entertainment stories and that we take what we are fed, we never question statistics and then form opinions on the flimsiest of so called evidence. Most people completely misunderstand risk and stats.

Glassner is preaching to the choir here of course and he does write very well. I always find it a little comical when authors critique studies on the one hand only to quote another that supports their case on the other and that is sometimes apparent here.

Glassner also clearly has an agenda on gun control and again, as a Brit, he has no trouble convincing me of that. I rather wish he had had the courage of his convictions and made that the central argument he was trying to make, instead of making several references throughout the book.

Not bad, rather overlong and repetitive for me, but the points he makes are certainly sound.