In 2003, a Home Office report stated that 68 British children have been abducted that year by a stranger. With 11.4 million children under 16 living in the UK, that works out to a risk of one in 167,647. 158 people in Britain have died from the human variation of mad cow disease yet 12,000 Britons are killed each year by flu and related complications. In the tradition of Malcolm Gladwell, Dan Gardner explores a new way of thinking about the decisions we make. We are the safest and healthiest human beings who ever lived, and yet irrational fear of the risk we face in everyday life is growing, with deadly consequences -- such as the 1,595 Americans killed when they made the mistake of switching from planes to cars after September 11. In part, this irrationality is caused by those who promote fear for their own gain -- including politicians, activists and the media. Culture also matters. But a more fundamental cause is human psychology. Working with risk science pioneer Paul Slovic, author Dan Gardner sets out to explain in a compulsively readable fashion just how we make our decisions and run our lives. We learn that the brain has not one but two systems for analyzing risk. One is primitive, unconscious, and intuitive. The other is conscious and rational. The two systems often agree, but occasionally they come to very different conclusions. When that happens, we can find ourselves worrying about what the statistics tell us is a trivial threat -- terrorism, child abduction, cancer caused by chemical pollution -- or shrugging off serious risks like obesity and smoking. Gladwell told us about the black box of our brains; Gardner takes us inside, helping us to understand how to deconstruct the information we're bombarded with and respond more logically and adaptively to our world. Risk is cutting-edge reading.

丹‧贾德纳（Dan Gardner），专栏作家，为《渥太华公民报》的资深撰稿人，专长领域是刑事司法和研究调查中的议题。他具备法律和历史专业，曾任加拿大首相和教育部长的资深政策顾问，于一九九七年转而从事新闻工作；其作品曾获众多奖项，包括加拿大国家报纸奖与国际特赦组织人权新闻奖等等。目前与妻子和一双子女定居于渥太华。

李静怡，毕业于台湾大学植病系。现居法国。兴趣广泛好奇心旺盛，语文是其中有趣的项目之一。喜爱阅读，有读无类；消遣是出入各艺术电影院和电影节及做饭。曾任诚品网路书店内容编辑及中研院动物所研究助理。现从事中、英、法文及闽南语口笔译；译有《爱尔兰》、《科学人》杂志新闻等。

黄慧慧，美国企业管理硕士，欧银企业转型组资深产业顾问。翻译过跨国企业内部训练教材、犯罪学教材、大学教师升等投稿、影集「慾望城市」，担任过移民、留学全部文件的执笔，以及商业和基督教会口译。长住过日本、美国、加拿大和义大利。