The Known Citizen
A History of Privacy in Modern America
Sarah E. Igo
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
The Known Citizen
A History of Privacy in Modern America
Sarah E. Igo
About This Book
A Washington Post Book of the Year
Winner of the Merle Curti Award
Winner of the Jacques Barzun Prize
Winner of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award "A masterful study of privacy."
âSue Halpern, New York Review of Books "Masterful (and timely)âŠ[A] marathon trek from Victorian propriety to social media exhibitionismâŠUtterly original."
â Washington Post Every day, we make decisions about what to share and when, how much to expose and to whom. Securing the boundary between one's private affairs and public identity has become an urgent task of modern life. How did privacy come to loom so large in public consciousness? Sarah Igo tracks the quest for privacy from the invention of the telegraph onward, revealing enduring debates over how Americans wouldâand shouldâbe known. The Known Citizen is a penetrating historical investigation with powerful lessons for our own times, when corporations, government agencies, and data miners are tracking our every move."A mighty effort to tell the story of modern America as a story of anxieties about privacyâŠShows us that although we may feel that the threat to privacy today is unprecedented, every generation has felt that way since the introduction of the postcard."
âLouis Menand, New Yorker "Engaging and wide-rangingâŠIgo's analysis of state surveillance from the New Deal through Watergate is remarkably thorough and insightful."
â The Nation