A Book on Fear: Feeling Safe in a Challenging World is Lawrence Doochin’s contribution to the ever-growing body of self-help literature on the subject of how to manage one’s fears. He advocates a full court press intent on nothing less than a full makeover of one’s character and reactions to their world. This may sound like a lofty, near unreachable, goal and reek of impracticality, but Doochin’s path towards realizing this idea never bites off more than it can chew and remains tightly tethered to earth. You may resist pursuing the trajectory Doochin plots out for his readers, but the experience of taking in what this book offers is a formidable experience you won’t soon forget.
LAWRENCE DOOCHIN: https://lawrencedoochin.com/books.htm
A big reason why is the impressive breadth of themes and life experience Doochin encompasses in a book including less than two hundred pages of text in its digital edition. He manages over A Book on Fear’s twenty-three chapters to touch on the interconnectedness often girding our fears and how we must attack their insidious influence in varied ways to achieve any lasting mastery over their effects. There are no digressions. His focus on the matter at hand in each individual chapter is complete and burns with laser-like intensity.
Doochin’s writing carries the bulk of the day, but he does include a couple of recurring devices designed to encourage a stronger connection between the book and its readers. The first is a takeaway summary tagged onto the end of each chapter followed by an optional exercise where readers are encouraged to write about topics relevant to the text. They are not essential elements in the book’s success, but nonetheless deepen its merits for readers and give a brief respite from Doochin’s customary voice.
He begins each chapter with an epigram connected to its contents. Many readers will be familiar with the source or the quote itself; there’s no obscurities, willful or otherwise, marring the book. Nor is there any self-indulgence. The sentences are trimmed of any fat, pointed towards a single purpose, and often display satisfying eloquence. His professional polish helps make the book’s prose all the more relatable. He resists colorful flourishes and approaches his writing like a tasteful drummer navigates their kit – they may throw a brief fill in here and there, but their primary goal is maintaining a consistent beat. Doochin never wavers.
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Book-Fear-Feeling-Challenging-World-ebook/dp/B08B14Q3M5
His past and professional life are major driving forces spurring this book into being. It is rare to find an author with true altruistic purposes but you feel Doochin’s genuine desire to be of service to other human beings lighting up each page of this book. It isn’t any ploy or erstwhile public relations concoction. Strip away the book’s intellectual trappings, its acknowledgements of how personal experience shapes our responses to the world and those we share it with, and it becomes clear this longing to assist others is its beating heart. We’re better off having voices such as Lawrence Doochin’s among us and his book A Book on Fear: Feeling Safe in a Challenging World has lasting value.
Garth Thomas