"Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck"

While I was looking through books on my nook for a social issue book for class i fell upon a book called "Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck: Why We Can't Look Away" by, Eric G. Wilson. Although I unfortunately don't think I can use it as a social issue book it brings a lot of things to my attention I wouldn't have thought of otherwise. The book brings light to morbid or pessimistic ways to view things that happen in this world. For instance, in chapter three it talks about death. Death used to be a relationship between people and reality. People would die in their houses in piece and the families would grieve in the house. Now a days, people go to the hospital. The author talks about how hospitals are a way of hope when people are desperate. "...The good doctor at any cost will keep you alive" (20) as he puts it. He also talks about how death is now, ".. a failure, a 'business lost.' this is... the attitude of the doctor, who claims control of death as his mission in life... When death arrives, it is regarded as an accident, a sign of helplessness and clumsiness that must be put out of mind." (20) So he is saying that in general death has changed. Now a days we see death differently than in the centuries before us. The author also goes into why we look at bad things even know we know they are bad. Why we force our selvves to look at the bad things such as, the Twin Towers crashing down, or a car crash on the high way. The book brings a whole new light to the world around us and ourselves that we never even thought about. It is a well written book that is a very interesting perspective on life. eveyone should read a least a little of this book and they will better understand why the world is changing so much around us and why "why we cant look away".