John Adams (4) (1938–)

An engaging and spirited survey of the psychological and some conceptual nature of risk and uncertainty in the modern world. The author delves beneath the surface of commonly held truisms, such as the efficacy of seat belts, to demonstrate that many such interventions ultimately end up with the main actors taking more risks, or by displacing risk factors onto bystanders (in the seat belt case, literally so - on to pedestrians and cyclists). The author uses the social construct of risk usefully to characterize the response as fatalist, individualist, egalitarian, or hierarchical; he acknowledges that an individual may behave differently at different times or in different contexts, so there is not a 100 percent consistency in such typologies of risk behavior. The book has a very engaging tour of the cost benefit analysis approach, and its foibles, something very close to this reader's interests as he faced the same questions in applying CBA to as irreplaceable a natural treasure as old growth forests. One gets the sense, however, that the author has not been well received in the community, as he has shot down such holy grails as seat belts, and comes close to questioning such holy of holies as the climate change-global warming lobby as well. On the whole, an instructive and enjoyable work.… (meer)