I received this through First Reads and I'm glad I did, as it's a book that would have been added to my "To Read" list and it would have taken years to get around to it.

I understand that some people are disappointed with the book, hoping for more scientific and concrete. The "How to Be Brave" part of the title is rather misleading, as the author never really tells us how.

Nevertheless, I truly enjoyed this book. I was moved to tears several times while waiting for my flights. The interviews are interesting for the stories they tell and also because it shows that people have different ideas of what being brave is.

( )

I received this through First Reads and I'm glad I did, as it's a book that would have been added to my "To Read" list and it would have taken years to get around to it.

I understand that some people are disappointed with the book, hoping for more scientific and concrete. The "How to Be Brave" part of the title is rather misleading, as the author never really tells us how.

Nevertheless, I truly enjoyed this book. I was moved to tears several times while waiting for my flights. The interviews are interesting for the stories they tell and also because it shows that people have different ideas of what being brave is.

( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I liked the premise of a book about how to be brave. As an introvert, it can be hard to feel confident and brave in social situations. But as Morland’s book indicates, being brave is not as difficult as it might seem. Most people agree on what makes you brave but it is easy to overlook how simple actions and decisions render a person brave.
Morland does cover a lot of different situations regarding timidity and courage. While it is a positive thing to be willing to encounter and learn from a wide variety of people and situations, the plot would have been tighter if the author had limited some of the encounters and spent a little more time on these situations.
Besides her overreaching goal, the book was interesting and at times thought provoking. ( )

This is an interesting collection of essays about bravery: clubs that exercised it, individuals that demonstrated it, and myths about it. I enjoyed the discussion in the book, although it felt like each chapter was isolated and the book didn't flow as smoothly as it could have. ( )

Billed as an investigation into bravery, Morland examines what it means to have courage from a variety of different perspectives-- in the face of institutions, nature, ourselves, animals, etc. Although I initially found this to be somewhat off-putting (mostly because the second perspective profiled bull-fighting extensively), in the end, I thought this was a strength of the book... it certainly made me think about all the different varieties of 'brave' that I hadn't really otherwise considered! Although the book was somewhat lengthy and florid at times, Morland is clearly an excellent interviewer-- those sections were when the work truly shone. ( )