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The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things
Barry Glassner
1999 · 210 pages · Narrative nonfiction
How it reads
The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things is narrative nonfiction (social psychology and cultural criticism, specifically), and its dominant mood is tense. The suspense is the kind you feel in your shoulders. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.
It's set in a big city setting, in the recent past, told in the third person, staying close to one character. Its central concerns are power and politics, identity and class and society. In weight it's heavy and literary — denser, more serious, and more demanding of you.
It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending resolves happily. At 210 pages it's a quick read. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.
Pick it up if…
- you're in the mood for something tense
- you want something to chew on
- you want a complete story in one book
Maybe not if…
- you need something cosy or heartwarming
All 15 dimensions
- Genre
- narrative nonfiction
- Author gender
- male
- Author experience
- established
- Setting: place
- big city
- Setting: time
- recent past
- Mood / feeling
- tense
- Pace
- moderate
- Tone / weight
- heavy and literary
- Length
- short
- Narrative style
- third person, one viewpoint
- Publication era
- modern classic
- Popularity
- well known
- Series vs standalone
- standalone
- Themes
- power and politics, identity, class and society
- Ending style
- resolved and happy
What these mean: the 15 dimensions of a book.
Books with a similar reading
The closest books in Match Book's catalogue across the same dimensions, and what they share.
- Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and CareerAndrew S. GroveShares: narrative nonfiction, tense mood, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace
- Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First CenturyDorothy RobertsShares: narrative nonfiction, tense mood, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace
Flash BoysMichael LewisShares: narrative nonfiction, tense mood, moderate pace, resolved and happy ending- The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Lovebell hooksShares: narrative nonfiction, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace, resolved and happy ending
- Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a NationKristin Kobes Du MezShares: narrative nonfiction, tense mood, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace
- An Atheist Primer: Did You Know All the Gods Came from the Same Place?Madalyn Murray O'HairShares: narrative nonfiction, tense mood, heavy and literary tone, resolved and happy ending
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