Panicology. Simon Briscoe and Hugh Aldersey-Williams - Softcover

Simon and Hugh met at the age of six, united in fear of Dr Who and by a concern that a diet of tinned pears and chocolate custard must be too enjoyable to be healthy. Hugh won a scholarship to read Natural Sciences at St John's College, Cambridge. Simon didn't - but, armed with a social sciences degree, has held proper jobs in the civil service, investment banking and at the Financial Times. Hugh is a writer and curator, and the author of a number of books on architecture and design and science, the most recent being Findings: Hidden Stories in First-Hand Accounts of Scientific Discovery. Simon's books include Interpreting the Economy and Britain in Numbers. They are married, but not to each other, and have three children, two of whom are siblings. Simon watches house prices rising in London. Hugh watches the sea level rising in Norfolk.

Briscoe, the statistics editor at The Financial Times, and science writer Aldersey-Williams (The Most Beautiful Molecule) join forces for a wide-ranging appeal to "worry less" in about public health, social policy, terrorists, declining resources and other sources of media-generated hysteria (except for earthquakes and cars, which we could stand to worry about more). While these British reporters turn up a few surprises (some demographers now worrying about "negative momentum," when "a shrinking population goes into an every-steeper spiral of decline") and some cheeky bits (the Continent prefers the bidet while Anglo Saxons don't, "the French buy less soap"), many of their themes are well-worn: the "obesity plague," flu scares, environmentalism gone awry, and health scares implicating power lines, cellular phones and genetically engineered foods. Despite some familiarity, Briscoe and Aldersey-Williams demystify a huge list of tricky subject matter with precision and humor.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.