For many, September 11 inaugurated a new era of fear. But as Robin shows in his unsettling tour of the Western imagination--the first intellectual history of its kind--fear has shaped our politics and culture since time immemorial. As our faith in progress recedes, he argues, we turn to fear as the justifying language of public life. We may not know the good, but we do know the bad--so we cling to fear, abandoning the quest for justice, equality,...