| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

American Fear: The Causes and Consequences of High Anxiety. By Peter N. Stearns. (New York: Routledge, 2006. xii, 243 pp. Cloth, $95.00, ISBN 978-0-415-95540-9. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 978-0-415-95542-3.)
Peter N. Stearns, the pioneering historian of emotions, has written a timely book that historicizes the post-9/11 climate of fear in the United States. In American Fear, Stearns argues that "we have come, as a nation, to fear excessively," and he seeks to explain why this is so (p. 19).	1
Historical and cross-cultural comparisons bear out the distinctiveness of modern American fear, according to Stearns. Using interviews, personal recollections, and polling data, he contrasts Americans' responses to Pearl Harbor with their responses to 9/11 and concludes that they "were over three times as likely to be afraid" after 9/11 and that "the level of their fear, when expressed, ran much deeper" (p. 36). He then compares Americans' reactions to the terrorist attacks with Spanish reactions to the Madrid train bombings in 2004 and British reactions to the London subway and bus bombings in 2005 and asserts that for Europeans anger and "a defiant sense of unity and determination quickly predominated" over fear (p. 48).	. . .

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