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‧賈德納（Dan Gardner），專欄作傢，為《渥太華公民報》的資深撰稿人，專長領域是刑事司法和研究調查中的議題。他具備法律和曆史專業，曾任加拿大首相和教育部長的資深政策顧問，於一九九七年轉而從事新聞工作；其作品曾獲眾多奬項，包括加拿大國傢報紙奬與國際特赦組織人權新聞奬等等。目前與妻子和一雙子女定居於渥太華。

李靜怡，畢業於颱灣大學植病係。現居法國。興趣廣泛好奇心旺盛，語文是其中有趣的項目之一。喜愛閱讀，有讀無類；消遣是齣入各藝術電影院和電影節及做飯。曾任誠品網路書店內容編輯及中研院動物所研究助理。現從事中、英、法文及閩南語口筆譯；譯有《愛爾蘭》、《科學人》雜誌新聞等。

黃慧慧，美國企業管理碩士，歐銀企業轉型組資深産業顧問。翻譯過跨國企業內部訓練教材、犯罪學教材、大學教師升等投稿、影集「慾望城市」，擔任過移民、留學全部文件的執筆，以及商業和基督教會口譯。長住過日本、美國、加拿大和義大利。