The Culture of Fear_ Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things - Barry Glassner [171]
66 Bruce Link, “Epidemiological Sociology and the Social Shaping of Population Health,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 49 (2008): 367-84; Centers for Disease Control, “Health, United States, 2004,” table 30, posted at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus04trend.pdf#03. See also, Kai Wright, “America’s AIDS Apartheid,” American Prospect, July 2008.
67 Adam Serwer, “Justice Polluted,” American Prospect, March 2009; Kai Wright, “The Subprime Swindle,” TheNation, 26 June 2008; Amelia Tyagi, “Amid Hope, Black Homeowners Struggle,” Marketplace,Minnesota Public Radio, 20 January 2009; E. Scott Reckard, “NAACP Suits Claim Mortgage Bias,” Los Angeles Times, 14 March 2009.
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About the Author
Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California, Barry Glassner is the author of seven books on contemporary social issues, including The Gospel of Food and Bodies. He was previously chairman of the sociological departments at Syracuse University and the University of Connecticut. His articles and reviews have appeared in newspapers and journals throughout the United States and abroad, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall StreetJournal,the Chicago Tribune, and the London Review of Books. He has also published research studies in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Psychiatry, and other leading social-science journals. In addition to being extensively quoted and profiled in dozens of newspapers and magazines, he has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Nightline, and other television programs, as well as programs on CNN, CNBC, and MSNBC, and National Public Radio.
Professor Glassner’s honors include an Outstanding Book of the Year award from Choice magazine and a visiting fellowship at Oxford University. The Culture of Fear was named a Best Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times Book Review and Knight—Ridder newspapers and has been hailed by reviewers everywhere. The book and Glassner himself are featured in Michael Moore’s film, Bowling for Columbine.
About the Book
When first published in 1999, The Culture of Fear was greeted with admiration and outspoken appreciation—admiration for Professor Glassner’s extensive and deep research and appreciation for his calling attention to the false fears that sap the time, energy, and money of all Americans and to the real problems and dangers that face us all. Numerous awards, author appearances, quotations, and references later, the book has taken on renewed significance with its being featured, along with its author, in Michael Moore’s prize-winning film, Bowlingfor Columbine. With each passing year since its publication, the book’s central theme has become more salient and more relevant to our lives.
Glassner’s eye-opening examination of the pathology of fear that affects all segments of our society reveals why Americans are overburdened with overblown fears and why those fears continue to be publicized by special-interest individuals and groups. He exposes the people and organizations that manipulate our anxieties and our views of and responses to life as it really isn’t, and who benefit from that manipulation. Politicians win elections by exaggerating concerns about crime and drug use when, in fact, both are in decline. Advocacy groups raise money by inflating the prevalence of specific—and phantom—diseases. Newspapers and television news programs monger new scares on a regular basis in order to gain ratings or increase sales.
“Why,” Glassner inquires, “are so many fears in the air, and so many of them unfounded?” The simple answer is the immense power and money that “await those who tap into our moral insecurities and supply us with symbolic substitutes.” By identifying the actual