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To be human is to experience fear, but what is it exactly that makes us fearful? Landscapes of Fear--written immediately after his classic Space and Place--is renowned geographer Yi-Fu Tuan's influential exploration of the spaces of fear and of how these landscapes shift during our lives and vary throughout history.

In a series of linked essays that journey broadly across place, time, and cultures, Tuan examines the diverse manifestations and causes of fear in individuals and societies: he describes the horror created by epidemic disease and supernatural visions of witches and ghosts; violence and fear in the country and the city; fears of drought, flood, famine, and disease; and the ways in which authorities devise landscapes of terror to instill fear and subservience in their own populations.

In this groundbreaking work--now with a new preface by the author--Yi-Fu Tuan reaches back into our prehistory to discover what is universal and what is particular in our inheritance of fear. Tuan emphasizes that human fear is a constant; it causes us to draw what he calls our "circles of safety" and at the same time acts as a foundational impetus behind curiosity, growth, and adventure.

Yi-Fu Tuan is the J.K. Wright and Vilas professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include The Hydrological Cycle and the Wisdom of God (Toronto), Topophilia (Prentice-Hall), Space and Place (Minnesota), Landscapes of Fear (Pantheon), Segmented Worlds and Self (Minnesota), Dominance and Affection (Yale), The Good Life (Wisconsin), and Morality and Imagination (Wisconsin).