Face Your Fear
Living with Courage in an Age of Caution
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
A world famous thinker, author, lecturer, and activist, whose diverse, acclaimed and immensely popular body of work covers such subjects as religion, relationships, and bravery, Boteach now turns his attention to America's present state of mind and comes to the conclusion that fear is crippling society with unprecedented force. The only way to escape this climate is to learn what fear is and how to overcome it.
He tackles fear headlong and answers the following questions: What is fear? What is it doing to us? Why is it affecting us now more than ever before? How can we be so powerful a society yet so succeptible to fear? How can we conquer it? Why do we need to conquer it?
Face Your Fear is a book so relevant that it has a chance to be absorbed by society's consciousness and to change the way we think.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Boteach's newest book reads like a film that stretches two hours but could have been wrapped up in 30 minutes. All fear, he posits, is a "toxic emotion" rooted in the "fear that you don't matter." In Part I, "The Case Against Fear," he draws on innumerable anecdotes from his work as a rabbi and counselor, but his generalizations are backed by little proof. ("No woman ever fears breast cancer," he writes. "Rather she fears her inability to deal with it.") To help readers eradicate fear from their lives, he presents 32 practical strategies in Part II that include dedicating your life to something higher, becoming a leader, "killing" your television, reconnecting with family, doing good, raising fearless children and building community. Each chapter begins with a biblical citation, but it is only in Part II that Boteach draws out that religious content. Boteach's approach veers from personal friend to questioning therapist to exhortative observer of American life, with an occasional shot of humor. The book's value lies in his insistence that fear is something entirely within readers' control, a choice that he correctly calls "immensely liberating."