The Science of Fear by Daniel Gardener
The Science of Fear combines everything I love about non-fiction. The book roughly has one main issue per chapter, ranging from peoples fears of cancer, car crashes, terrorism, plains, paedophilia and such. And each chapter discusses how the brain reacts to it. Using a topic that I’ve recently been really interested in, which is cognitive biases, errors in our brains logic. He goes over the optimism bias, the availability heuristic, the halo effect, and others, giving each of them simple names like the example rule (things seem more likely if its easier to remember an example of it) and the good bad rule (if something is bad the risks of it are much higher, but if something is good the risks are lower). He explains each of the cognitive biases he mentions well, with plenty of examples and studies to back him up. He also frequently quotes Daniel Kahneman, the author of another very respected science author, so you know its reliable. This book was extremely informative, and after reading it you will think twice about overestimating fears.
Gingerjumble 