Nerve is an odd little title, a memoir of a woman trying to overcome some specific fears — falling from heights, and driving — occasionally interspersed dips into psychology and neurology. Eva Holland’s fear of heights is enough that she tries multiple avenues to address it: controlled exposure, “EMDR” treatment, specialized clinics, eta. Though she’s writing about her fear and panic attacks, Holland strikes me as a courageous person: her body may quake, but her will is strong: she continues trying to push herself by rock climbing and jumping from a plane. (It was….not a pleasant experience.) Although this isn’t a science book proper, as she reviewed literature on fear-studies she passes on much of interest for the common reader: the fact that our brains parse fear-sweat differently than exercise-sweat, for instance, and the powerful role intuition can play in creating the sense of fear. Our brains can recognize clues that throw up red flags long before our rational, conscious mind. We learn, too, of the value of fear: one woman had a brain disease that destroyed her ability to experience fear, for the most part, and it led to her into one bad life choice after another, and made it difficult to maintain relationships because she had no fear of offending or stepping on toes. The book is an interesting read, aided by having such a determined and resilent author who does in fact make serious strides into mitigating some of her more irrational or overactive fears.