After 9/11, fear has become an increasing issue in American society. Peter Stearns explores the historical causes and contemporary consequences of the high anxiety prevelant in American culture. Peter N. Stearns, the pioneering historian of emotions, has written a timely book that historicizes the 9/11 climate of fear in the United States. In American Fear, Stearns argues taht "we have come, as a nation, to fear excessively," and he seeks to explain why this is so. The Journal of American History