Against Security: How We Go Wrong at Airports, Subways, and
Other Sites of Ambiguous Danger, by Harvey Molotch, Princeton
University Press, 278 pages, $35  Security is both a feeling and
a reality, and the two are different things. People can feel
secure when they’re actually not, and they can be secure even
when they believe otherwise.   This discord explains much of
what passes for our national discourse on security policy.
Security measures often are nothing more than security theater,
making people feel safer without actually increasing their
protection.  A lot of psychological research has tried to make
sense out of security, fear, risk, and safety. But however
fascinating the academic literature is, it often misses the
broader social dynamics. New York University’s Harvey Molotch
helpfully brings a sociologist’s perspective to the subject in
his new book Against Security  Molotch delves deeply into a few
examples and uses them to derive general principles. He starts
Against Security with a mundane topic