In the months following 9/11, 1,500 additional traffic deaths were recorded in the United States. Why? People were afraid to fly.

Flying was no more dangerous; in the wake of the terrorist attacks, it may have never been safer. But 1,500 people could not bring themselves to board a plane. They died on the highway instead.

That’s just one example of the baseless fears that keep people nervous, keep them home, make them buy products they don’t need, send them to war and alter the culture, making everyone less free.

Newspaper columnist and author Daniel Gardner has written a timely, persuasive and occasionally infuriating book about the ways governments, corporations and news media rule and direct people through fear. Some of these scare tactics are used with calculation. Others are simply passed along until they are accepted, without question, as fact.

A startling example is the skewed statistic about child predators. In the 1980s, John Walsh, father of a murdered child and founder of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, told Congress that 50,000 children disappear annually, “abducted by strangers for reasons of foul play.” The actual number of children kidnapped by strangers, reports Gardner, is closer to 115. About half of those are returned safely.

The consequences are not minor. Some parents are so fearful, they don’t let their kids play outside anymore; to exploit these fears, GPS systems are now being developed to keep track of kids.

Through similar examples, Gardner explains how the mammalian brain senses and then shares fear (making this an interesting trip into our collective psyche as well).

And though The Science of Fear may make you feel like you’ve been duped—by your government, by big business and by mass media—it may also make you sigh with relief. There has never been a better time to be alive, Gardner writes. If only we could relax and enjoy it.

By Marjorie Preston

Marjorie is Managing Editor of Casino Connection Atlantic City.