Borrowed on a long plane trip and eventually found in the Popular Science section of a local bookstore it’s worth reading. Risk has a tagline of “Risk: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn’t – and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger”, here’s my thoughts.

Prologue:
Starts with the events of Septmeber 11th, how they were broadcast to such a global audience, people turned away from flying (to driving) immediately, but after 1 year people went back to flying. Research showed driving deaths that year (due to more drivers? not enough stats to draw real conclusions) of almost half the amount of people who died that day, and the prologue finishes with a powerful, if misguided, statement of “It was fear who stole their loved ones.”

It also mentions media coverage of the story as “selling” us the fear, when the Antrax was discovered it was a double hit to our fear receptiors, but some what unusally, we feared flying, but the rest of our lives were broadly unchanged (no bomb shelters built, etc.)