The Gift of Fear - Gavin de Becker

This book is one I have heard of for ages all over the internet, and I finally decided I just needed to read it already and see what all the discussion was about. The subtitle of this book is Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence and that pretty much sums it up - this book talks about the value of using "intuition" or "gut feelings" to help with personal safety. For example, many of us are socialized to "be nice" at all times, and we are therefore often nice to total strangers. While most of the time this works out fine (and can make society a bit more pleasant for everyone), if someone is creeping you out, even if you can't identify exactly why, it's OK, and it's NOT rude, to remove yourself from the situation. Etc. This book is by now somewhat dated; I assumed it was published much more recently than 1997, but that's OK. It has some interesting info and I'm glad I finally read it.