truepenny | Review: Morland, The Society of Timid Souls

The Society of Timid Souls: or, How To Be Brave by Polly Morland

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an excellent book. It's about courage: what it is, how it works, people who demonstrate it--all kinds of people, in all kinds of ways--the question suggested by the title, which is: Can people who don't think they are brave learn how? (The answer seems to be at least a partial yes. For example, studies have found that if people know about the Bystander Effect, they are much less likely to fall prey to it. Or the fact that people who teach nonviolent resistance are essentially teaching people to be brave. At least in some forms, it's a learnable skill.) Morland proceeds by interviews, with people who do or have done brave things, or people who have witnessed bravery. I found it interesting that almost all of the people who were interviewed denied that they were courageous. We seem to think courage is something that only manifests in other people.

Morland's tone throughout is warm, thoughtful, dryly funny. She says straight out that she is a Timid Soul (although she's a documentary maker who has worked in extremely dangerous places) and the book is structured as her quest, which she is sharing with her readers. She is always inclusive, always insisting that Timid Souls need not be trapped in timidity forever. She ranges widely, from a man dying of ALS to soldiers on the battlefield to a guy who free climbs skyscrapers to opera singers to Bernard Lafayette. All kinds of courage.

I respected and appreciated how careful Morland was and how much thought she put into her quest. This could have been a glib and surfacey book (like, for instance, The Survivors Club), but it was insightful and compassionate and proceeded with a gentle but determined intellectual rigor.

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