David Kirkpatrick, The Facebook Effect (2010)
A fascinating account of the rise of Facebook. There are times when Kirkpatrick seems too sympathetic to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, but overall, this book is illuminating and engaging.
Robin D. Barnes, Outrageous Invasions: Celebrites’ Private Lives, Media, and the Law (2010)
There are some very interesting parts of this book, but it at times seems like a grab bag of topics relating to celebrities and its central argument could use more development. Nevertheless, it is worth reading because it discusses some interesting cases and explores comparative legal perspectives on the issues.
Shane Harris, The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State (2010)
An engaging narrative that chronicles the surveillance and security measures the United States undertook after 9/11. Filled with interesting facts, the book reads like a story.
Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life (2010)
An extensive history of the home, which as I’ve explored in some of my own writings, plays an important role in the history of privacy. Bryson’s narrative reads well, but he only supplies a bibliography at the end — no endnotes or indications of the sources of particular facts and details. I find this practice…
Hal Niedzviecki, The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors (2009)
This book is an extended essay on self-exposure online. It is filled with many interesting anecdotes. The book has a journalistic style and raises observations and questions more than it proposes solutions or policies. The “notes” at the end consist only of a brief bibliography for each chapter, and there are no indications of which…
Christena Nippert-Eng, Islands of Privacy (2010)
A fascinating sociological account of people’s attitudes toward privacy and their behaviors with regards to preserving their privacy. It contains numerous interviews, quoted copiously, of people in their own voices discussing how they conceal their secrets. Engaging and compelling reading.
Stewart Baker, Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism (2010)
A provocative argument for stronger security protections and a vigorous attack on privacy. The arguments against privacy are often glib and dismissive, but the book is worth reading for Baker’s extensive personal experience dealing with the issues.
Cass Sunstein, On Rumors (2009)
A very short essay on the damage wrought by false online rumors and a discussion of how and why such rumors spiral out of control, such as the phenomena of social cascades and group polarization. The book is worth reading, but quite short for a book (only 88 pages of primary text, in a very…
Adam D. Moore, Privacy Rights: Moral and Legal Foundations (2010)
Privacy Rights is a lucid and compelling examination of the right to privacy. Adam Moore provides a theoretically rich and trenchant account of how to reconcile privacy with competing interests such as free speech, workplace productivity, and security.
Ian Kerr, Carole Lucock, and Valerie Steeves (editors), Lessons from the Identity Trail (2009)
Ian Kerr and his fellow editors have collected a terrific group of essays about privacy and identification. Froomkin, Raab, Nissenbaum, Chandler, and many others have contributed to this volume. This is a great book.