None of Your Damn Business

Cappello's puckish sensibilities and engaging style dovetail wittily with his well-chosen and thoughtful examples, resulting in an academic text that any reader can appreciate. This book is a must-read for legislators, policymakers, and anyone curious about the ways their privacy could potentially be compromised by the government, the media, or data brokers. * Publishers Weekly * A thorough account of privacy struggles that draws on deep research to reveal that the privacy dilemma dates back more than a century and has roiled American life through two world wars, the New Deal, the Cold War, and the post 9/11 era. . . . None of Your Damn Business provides excellent background information for citizens concerned with the erosion of privacy rights, as well as for government officials and legal professionals positioned to act upon privacy laws that protect citizens while providing necessary oversight. * Foreword Reviews * Cappello's treatment manages the trick of being both thorough and lively. * American Historical Review * 'What is it we fear we're losing?' Cappello asks in his brilliant study of privacy in America. Is there any timelier question? Thoroughly researched and deftly told, None of Your Damn Business is a history of privacy written for and about Wall Street and Main Street, government and the courts, intelligence operatives and digital entrepreneurs, current and future citizens. It deserves our full attention. -- David Nasaw * author of The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy * Tracing a century of debates on topics from national security to reproductive rights, None of Your Damn Business offers a lively, instructive account of Americans' ambivalent (and often muddled) thinking about privacy. -- Sarah Igo * author of The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America * Privacy, or the intimate politics of power, is becoming more important with each day. If there is no privacy, there can be no resistance and thus no social progress. In this fine book, Cappello makes a lucid case for why we need what Justice Louis Brandeis called 'the right to be left alone.' -- Christian Parenti * author of The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror * Calmly, clearly, and sensibly, Mr. Cappello shows us how privacy as a right-and as a legal concept-gradually evolved as America itself evolved from small, largely rural beginnings into today's incredibly intricate, sophisticated mega-state driven by an equally intricate, sophisticated mega-economy. -- Aram Bakshian * The Washington Times *