The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America » (1 VINTAGE)

Jeffrey Rosen is an associate professor at the George Washington University Law School and legal affairs editor of The New Republic. He is a graduate of Harvard College; Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School. His essays and book reviews have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker. He lives in Washington, D.C.

The Unwanted Gaze is an important book about one of the most pressing issues of our day: how changes in technology and the law have combined to demolish our rights of privacy, and what we can and must do to re-secure them.

In a world in which Ken Starr can subpoena Monica Lewinsky's bookstore receipts and deleted e-mail messages can be used as justification for firing employees, it's clear that private information of all kinds can be taken out of context and wielded against us. Where exactly did our constitutional guarantees on privacy go? In superbly lucid prose, Jeffrey Rosen tells not only where those privacy rights went but also how we can get them back. The Unwanted Gaze is utterly indispensable for anyone who cares about the future of his or her private life.

Alan Nevins Profesor of History, Columbia University - Alan Brinkly

Jeffrey Rosen has the rare ability to write about complex areas of the law with grace and clarity. In this book, he addresses one of the most important and controversial legal questions of our time: the much-contested right to privacy, which Rosen persuasively argues has been seriously damaged by a wide range of intrusive innovations in law and society. Beginning with the Lewinsky scandal, Rosen ranges widely through critical moments in recent history and presents a disturbing picture of how law and technology have combined to imperil an important, if relatively recently asserted, right.