| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Guarding Life's Dark Secrets: Legal and Social Controls over Reputation, Propriety, and Privacy. By Lawrence M. Friedman. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. xii, 348 pp. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8047-5739-3.)

The premise that underpins this insightful book is that laws that are widespread always make some kind of social sense, not so much because of the strict adherence to the norms they foster but rather because of their selective, class-based enforcement. The selective enforcement of statutes addressing marriage, sexuality, pornography, and reputation exemplifies what Lawrence M. Friedman sees as the living law of privacy. His aim is to explain how and why the living law of privacy changed over time in the United States, while he touches on England and Western Europe as well. He succeeds admirably in this essay in history, as he calls it, because he understands his materials at an extraordinary level of complexity and can transform them into a clear and compelling narrative. Although individual segments of his story, such as the emerging role of the paparazzi or the sporadic regulation of prostitution, will be familiar to social and legal historians, they have never been incorporated into so bold or sweeping an analysis.

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