The Gift of Fear
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- ISBN13: 9780440226192
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Right dread is regularly a signal that can save your life. Are you listening?
A date won’t take “no” for an answer. The new nanny gives a mother an uneasy feeling. A weirder in a deserted parking lot offers unsolicited help. The threat of violence surrounds us every day. But we can protect ourselves, by learning to trust–and act on–our gut instincts.
In this empowering book, Gavin de Becker, the man Oprah Winfrey calls the nation’s leading practiced on violent behavior, shows you how to spot even devious signs of danger–before it’s too late. Shattering the myth that most violent acts are unpredictable, de Becker, whose clients include top Hollywood stars and government agencies, offers point ways to protect yourself and persons you like, including…how to act when approached by a weirder…when you should dread a name close to you…what to do if you are being stalked…how to uncover the source of anonymous threats or phone calls…the largest mistake you can make with a threatening person…and more. Learn to spot the danger signals others miss. It might just save your life.Amazon.com Review
Each hour, 75 women are raped in the United States, and every few seconds, a woman is beaten. Each day, 400 Americans suffer shooting injuries, and another 1,100 face criminals armed with guns. Leader Gavin de Becker says victims of violent behavior usually feel a sense of dread before any threat or violence takes place. They may distrust the dread, or it may impel them to some action that saves their lives. A leading practiced on predicting violent behavior, de Becker believes we can all learn to admit these signals of the “universal code of violence,” and use them as tools to help us survive. The book teaches how to identify the warning signals of a potential attacker and recommends strategies for dealing with the problem before it becomes life threatening. The case studies are gripping and suspenseful, and include tactics for dealing with similar situations.
People don’t just “snap” and become violent, says de Becker, whose clients include federal government agencies, celebrities, police departments, and shelters for battered women. “There is a process as observable, and regularly as predictable, as water coming to a boil.” Learning to predict violence is the cornerstone to preventing it. De Becker is a master of the psychology of violence, and his advice may save your life. –Joan Fee
A Q&A with Gavin de Becker
Question: In today’s world, where terror and tragedy seem omnipresent, the dread of violence never seems more heightened. Is the world a more violent place than it ever has been?
Gavin de Becker : Your question contains much of the answer: today’s world, “where terror and tragedy seem omnipresent…” The key word is “seem.” When TV news coverage presents so much on these topics, it elevates the perception of terrorism and tragedy way beyond the reality. In every major city, TV news makes forty hours of original production every day, most of it composed and open to get our attention with dread. Hence an incident on an airplane in which a man fails to do any hurt is treated as if the make-shift bomb really exploded. It didn’t. Imagine having a near miss in your car, avoiding what would have been a serious crash–and then talking about every hour for months after the fact. Welcome to TV news.
To the second part of your question, No, the world is not a more violent place than it has ever been, but we live as if it were. The U.S. is the most powerful nation in world history–and also the most worried.
Question: Your bestselling book The Gift of Dread gives many examples to help readers admit what you call pre-incident indicators (PINS) of violence. What role does intuition play in recognizing these signals?
Gavin de Becker: Like every creature on planet, we have an extraordinary defense resource: We don’t have the sharpest claws and strongest jaws–but we do have the largest brains, and intuition is the most impressive process of these brains. It might be hard to accept its importance because intuition is regularly described as emotional, unreasonable, or inexplicable. Husbands chide their wives about “feminine intuition” and don’t take it seriously. If intuition is used by a woman to clarify some choice she made or a concern she can’t let go of, men roll their eyes and write it off. We much prefer logic, the grounded, explainable, unemotional thought process that ends in a supportable conclusion. In fact, Americans worship logic, even when it’s incorrect, and deny intuition, even when it’s right. Men, of course, have their own version of intuition, not so light and inconsequential, they tell themselves, as that feminine stuff. Theirs is more viscerally named a “gut feeling,” but whatever name we use, it isn’t just a feeling. It is a process more extraordinary and ultimately more logical in the natural order than the most fantastic computer estimate. It is our most complex cognitive process and, at the same time, the simplest.
Intuition connects us to the natural world and to our scenery. It carries us to predictions we will later marvel at. “Somehow I knew,” we will say about the chance meeting we predicted, or about the unexpected phone call from a distant friend, or the unlikely turnaround in a name’s behavior, or about the violence we steered clear of, or, too regularly, the violence we elected not to steer clear of. The Gift of Dread offers strategies that help us admit the signals of intuition–and helps us avoid denial, which is the enemy of safety.
Question: Your latest book, Just 2 Seconds, has been called a “masterpiece” of analysis on the art of preventing assassination. It contains an entire compendium of attacks on protected persons across the globe. What motivated you to place together such a definitive reference? What tenets can be applied to one’s everyday life?
Gavin de Becker: Most of all, we wrote the book we needed. My co-authors and I had long looked for an wide collection of attack summaries from which vital new insights could be harvested. Unable to find it, we committed to do the work ourselves, eventually collecting more than 1400 cases to analyze. Many new insights and concepts emerged from the study, and the one most applicable to day to day life, even for people who are not living with unusual risks, is to be in the present; pre-sent, as it were. Now is the only time anything ever happens–now is where the action is. All focus on anything outside the Now (the past, memory, the future, fantasy) detracts focus from what’s really happening in your environment. Human being have the capacity to look right at something and not see it, and in studying such a crisp event–the few seconds during which assassinations have occurred–Just 2 Seconds aims to enhance the reader’s ability to see the value of the present moment.
(Photo © Avery Helm)
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I finished it in one day. It is engaging and appealing it has got lots of sex . The main thought of the book is that violent acts do not occur lacking warning, and trusting and sharpening one’s intuition (gut feeling) may save your life.
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Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
I have not read this book, but a name recommended it to me. After reading the critic’s reviews I see that it wouldn’t serve much purpose.
To the degree that this book alerts unaware people as to how to carry themselves safely in this world I applaud it. To the degree this book contributes to the growing hysteria over ’safety’ as promulgated by the lunatic right fringe (yes, including President Bush) I condemn it. Smacks of McCarthyism and the Red Scare all over again.
The last reader’s review sparked my ire. She stated something to the effect of “I was plagued by a constant sense of unease and worry about the potential for danger as I went about my daily activities”. That being the case I would suggest a shrink, not a book that will further enable your fantasies.
Also, absurdisms such as “no man unknown to you has a reason to stop and question directions”. Huh? I take place to be a man who routinely questions people I don’t know directions, man or woman….I could care less. And now this gets one branded as a potentially treacherous person. Let’s see, men are criticized for NOT asking directions, and now they are set up as suspicious FOR asking directions. Why not just title the book “Men Are Treacherous and To Be Avoided”?
Give me a break.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
This book is nothing more than random foolishness that plays to the insecurities of people, in particular women. Randomly fearing everything is more likely to make you a victim than keep you safe. Basically, provides no insight into how to avoid treacherous situations and people – just focuses on building the reader frightened of everyone and every situation. I truly marvel if there is any truth in the tales and scenarios place into the world. Mind you, there are lots of Ted Bundy types out there – but this book gave you no guidance on identifying the truly terrible folks and providing any survival strategies.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
This book may be a useful read for many, but we really shouldn’t need a book to tell us what he’s trying to say. He just reiterates simple common sense that says, “Trust and Follow your instincts”.
The leader writes with a liberal political agenda. He’s anti-2nd Ammendment and pro-choice and this is showed in the book. It would have been nice if he could have left the politics out.
He does gets knocked down a couple of stars for his view on guns. He has let a personal experience with a psycho family tree member cloud his judgement. He also manages to repeat the fact that you are something like 47 times more likely to be kill with a gun if one is in your house. Which is a right statistic, …if your whole clan is runnin’ dope.
Be sure to read Paxton Quigley’s “Armed and Female” along with this book to get a balanced perspective on whether the choice to protect yourself with a firearm is right for you.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
I can’t tell you how fantastic it is to have really lost all optimisim about humankind from reading this book. I’m so glad that I know know that most people are evil and violent. How ignorant I was before! Now I go through life armed with the knowledge that it is a cold cruel world out there. I feel so empowered. NOBODY is going to even THINK about approaching me anymore! Wanna date?
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5