On Risk by philosopher Mark Kingwell is "a book about risk written at an especially risky time." While life is full of risk assessments--from a child's decision whether it's worth sneaking a cookie, to an adult's deliberations on buying vs. renting--most people, unless employed in dangerous jobs or living in dangerous areas, don't think about their risk of death. Yet the worldwide arrival of Covid-19 this year crystallized the realization that "few of us... had considered death to be a daily prospect in need of consideration. And yet of course it was, because it always is."
Kingwell's writing is at once cerebral and accessible. At the beginning of the pandemic, "We're all in this together" was heard everywhere but, as Kingwell points out, "Social and economic fault lines render the virus very uneven in distribution," and so, in actuality, some people are in "it" much more than others. He pays particular attention to the intersection of risk and politics. "Risk is always political," he maintains, since risk is often distributed without consent. When a Michigan family has brown water flowing from their faucets, for example, "even the most grim observer will have a hard time maintaining that the risk incurred is a matter of personal responsibility." As an anxious world, slow to return to optimism, moves toward the second year of the pandemic, this compact, timely book is essential reading for understanding that because risk can never entirely be eliminated, hope is not only necessary, indeed, it is "radical." --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.