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Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger (MacSci) |  | Author: Jeff Wise
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Category: Book
List Price: $27.00
Buy New: $15.78
as of 7/30/2010 13:17 CDT details
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New (29) Used (10) from $15.78
Rating:  8 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1
ISBN: 0230614396
Dewey Decimal Number: 152.46
EAN: 9780230614390
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Fear is a mysterious force. It sabotages our ability to think clearly and can drive us to blind panic, yet it can also give us superhuman speed, strength, and powers of perception. Having baffled mankind for ages, fear is now yielding its secrets to scientific inquiry. The simple model of “fight or flight”--that people respond to danger either by fleeing in terror or staying to fight through it--has been replaced by a more complex understanding of the fear response. Veteran science journalist Jeff Wise delves into the latest research to produce an astonishing portrait of the brain’s hidden fear pathways. Wise, who writes the “I'll Try Anything” column for Popular Mechanics, favors a hands-on approach, volunteering to jump out of an airplane while wearing sensors and to endure a four-hour simulated missile attack on a Navy destroyer. He returns with a tale that combines lucid explanations of brain dynamics with gripping, true-life stories of mortal danger: we watch a woman defend herself against a mountain lion attack in a remote canyon; we witness a couple desperately fighting to beat back an encircling wildfire; we see a pilot struggle to maintain control of his plane as its wing begins to detach. By understanding how and why these people responded the way they did, Wise argues, we can better arm ourselves against our own everyday fears. Full of amazing characters and cutting-edge science, Extreme Fear is an original and absorbing narrative that will force you to reconsider the limits of human potential.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
Very Comprehensive June 1, 2010
Vesselin Gueorguiev
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a very comprehensive book on fear. It's deep and went beyond my expectations. It is also structured in a very open-ended way where you can connect your own experience or research to what the book presents.
Got me April 17, 2010
A. Roe
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In Extreme Fear, I found myself fascinated by a subject in which I thought I had only a passing interest, and Wise's illuminations have continued to inform my own experience long since I put it down.
His colloquial tone conveys both his deep curiosity and his comprehensive understanding both. It is this type of balance that makes the book more than a diversion, but more than an analysis, as he marries science to daily life. His remarkable stories of confronting fears--in the lab and in the wild--are seen with eye-opening physiological explanations of our ordinary and extraordinary experience.
Excellent overview of the mechanisms of fear March 16, 2010
Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Everyone feels fear. It is inherent to the human condition.
For some, fear is a stimulant driving them to extraordinary feats. For others, fear is paralyzing.
Humankind has struggled with fear since the dawn of time, trying to overcome or at least control it. Fear has been the subject of philosophers, priests, aristocrats, generals and psychologists, all trying to understand it. And now scientists have entered the picture and fear is giving up its secrets.
In this fascinating and engrossing book, fear gets the pop-science treatment from Jeff Wise, who brings a varied background as "science writer, outdoor adventurer and pilot of airplanes and gliders" to the task. Actually, his accomplishments seem pretty thin for the task, but he is no less qualified than other pop-science writers like Malcolm Gladwell.
In fact, Wise does, in my opinion, a better job than Gladwell.
He successfully merges contemporary scientific investigations into the nature of fear with medial analysis and real life stories of people both trapped and motivated by fear. Wise writes well and he has structured his book to be fast-moving, even though it is packed with information including more than a few scientific terms the reader is likely to be unfamiliar with. His examples are particularly well chosen to illustrate his points. For example, he describes scuba diving in underwater caves and how divers are faced with situations where fear and panic appear to be = and in fact are - the only "rational" responses, such as being lost and alone in an underwater cave.
I have a small criticism of the book which I suspect may owe more to Wise's editor than to Wise himself: the politically correct use of pronouns (referring to a person as "her" when the subject was clearly male) and referring to the Wehrmach as "Nazis", an inaccurate euphemism intended to spare German sensitivities about their WWII role. Small nits to be picking, but irritating to this reader.
Wise not only explores the nature of extreme fear and how it has developed in our species, but also looks at ways in which humans can attempt to deal with it.
Fascinating stuff and a very worthwhile, enjoyable and informative read.
Jerry
Well worth overcoming my fear of spending more money at Amazon! January 22, 2010
Eric A. Morris (Sherman Oaks, CA USA)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I truly enjoyed this book. The pages flew by and I got through it very quickly, a testament to the literacy and skill of the author. Wise has taken on an interesting subject and explicated it clearly, convincingly, and in an entertaining way. The anecdotes (many scrapes with death) were often thrilling. The portions on physiology and psychology, particularly those on brain chemistry, could have been a bore in the hands of a lesser writer, but the author presents them in an easy-to-understand and lucid way. The section on stage fright was worth the price of the book for me; I'm a former professional actor and champion public speaker who now gets a case of nerves speaking in front of others. It was fascinating to know how and why this happens, and that I'm not alone (Laurence Olivier suddenly got terrible stage fright in the middle of his career!) Finally, the author had some suggestions for overcoming fear which may be of value to you. In all, this was a compelling read, both entertaining and informative.
Understanding our fears January 11, 2010
John Swart
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The title might make you think this book is about something the average person can't really relate to - extreme sports for example - but in reality, as Jeff Wise points out in the introduction, everyone finds themselves experiencing fear at various times. It's his explanation of how we respond to it that is important and illuminating.
Wise uses situations both common, encountering stage fright, and unusual. Examples that might seem extreme at first: being caught in an avalanche, defending your house from a wild fire, witnessing a car accident - have been in the news often enough to easily see yourself in similar circumstances. Wise explains what is happening in those moments and gives us an understanding of how to better deal with fear, whatever the cause, ourselves. Interesting topic written in a way that is both approachable and suspenseful, while giving you the science behind your mind and body's response. Highly recommend for anyone interested in understanding how to embrace something most people don't manage well, and learn to use it to your advantage.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
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