Description
Book SynopsisThis book investigates the elements that have developed as part of the definition of propriety and good behavior, and how the law has acted to protect respectable people and their reputations.
Trade Review"This is a wise, learned, and memorable text by one of the leading historians in America." —James Whitman, Yale Law School
"As always, Friedman's wonderful eye for historical detail and his deep and wide research provide the reader an engaging and highly readable narrative ... The manuscript is a characteristically excellent piece of work by one of the very best practitioners of legal history." —John Fabian Witt, Columbia Law School
"In his new book, Stanford legal historian Lawrence M. Friedman does not address these questions directly, but lays some useful groundwork for their contemplation by providing a social history of the legal remedies most commonly associated with protecting the privacy of personal information and behavior The book tells its main story clearly, entertainingly, and persuasively." —James A Gardner, University at Buffalo Law School, State University of New York
"Friedman provides a detailed history of various legal concepts related to privacy and personal reputation. The strongest parts of the book attempt to address intriguing puzzles such as why truth has emerged as an absolute defense for libel, but truth makes blackmail a more serious offense Friedman's command of the material and many interesting examples make much of this story interesting." —
CHOICE"To a cultural historian interested in the social construction of privacy Friedman's book offers an interesting and useful discussion of how the law has worked to protect reputation and privacy for some while leaving others unprotected."
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American Historical Review"[The book] enriches our understanding of privacy as a shifting legal and cultural concept, it illuminates changing attitudes toward life's dark secrets, and it helps us fit the fate of a figure such as Eliot Spitzer into a broad historical context." —
Journal of American HistoryTable of ContentsContents: Acknowledgments xxx Chapter One Our General Argument 000 Chapter Two Status and Mobility in the Nineteenth Century 000 Chapter Three Sticks and Stones: The Law of Defamation 000 Chapter Four The Victorian Compromise: Slippage and Control in the Moral Laws 000 Chapter Five The Anatomy of Blackmail 000 Chapter Six Good Women, Bad Women: Seduction, Breach of Promise and Related Matters 000 Chapter Seven Censorship: Its Rise and Fall 000 Chapter Eight Into the Twentieth Century 000 Chapter Nine Privacy and Reputation in the Late Twentieth Century 000 Chapter Ten Defamation in Contemporary Times 000 Chapter Eleven A Summing Up: And a Cautious Look at the Future 000 Notes 000 Index 000
