Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle. By Cass R. Sunstein. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 246p. $65.00 cloth, $23.99 paper.

This is the era in which many prefer to be safe than to be sorry. In the past five years, we have seen the United States justify a preemptive war against Iraq lest Saddam Hussein use weapons of mass destruction against us or others. Ordinary Asian citizens donned surgical masks to avoid contracting severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. And in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Americans stocked up on duct tape so that they could be “sheltered-in-place.” Is not an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure?