Nerve

Award–winning, bestselling journalist Eva Holland’s Nerve is “an intimate and wide-ranging look at fears and how we overcome them” (New York Times).

A TIME Top 100 Must Read

Since childhood, Eva Holland has been gripped by two debilitating phobias: fear of losing her mother and fear of heights. The worst comes to pass with her mother’s sudden death in 2015, and something shifts for Eva. Then, when an ice-climbing expedition ends with Eva embarrassed and in tears, a new resolve kicks in: Fear may define her past, but it won’t decide her future!

Through incredibly moving storytelling and boots-off-the-ground investigation, Holland peels back the layers of paralyzing dread to ask: Is fear necessary? Is it rooted in the body or the mind? And even: Is there a better way to feel afraid? By grappling with, even embracing, her innermost dreads, Holland aspires to give us all the nerve to face down the phobias that limit our lives.

“The publication of Nerve could be one of the most germane and significant books to help people navigate through our current dark and unfamiliar emotional and physical territory. With acuity of purpose, author Holland demonstrates to her audience that armed with a baseline of knowledge, fear is an emotion that can be experienced, examined, and conquered, thereby strengthening the human psyche and its ability to deal with future catastrophes.” —New York Journal of Books

“Nerve is brave and tender, and an example of why journalists treating themselves as guinea pigs should never completely go out of style.” —WIRED