{"product_id":"family-secrets-shame-privacy-in-modern-britain-paperback","title":"Family Secrets: Shame \u0026 Privacy in Modern Britain - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eDeborah Cohen\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe live today in a culture of full disclosure, where tell-all memoirs top the best-seller lists, transparency is lauded, and privacy seems imperiled. But how did we get here? \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eExploring scores of previously sealed records, \u003cem\u003eFamily Secrets \u003c\/em\u003eoffers a sweeping account of how shame--and the relationship between secrecy and openness--has changed over the last two centuries in Britain. Deborah Cohen uses detailed sketches of individual families as the basis for comparing different sorts of social stigma. She takes readers inside an Edinburgh town house, where a genteel maiden frets with her brother over their niece's downy upper lip, a darkening shadow that might betray the girl's Eurasian heritage; to a Liverpool railway platform, where a heartbroken mother hands over her eight-year old illegitimate son for adoption; to a town in the Cotswolds, where a queer vicar brings to his bank vault a diary--sewed up in calico, wrapped in parchment--that chronicles his sexual longings. Cohen explores what families in the past chose to keep secret and why. She excavates the tangled history of privacy and secrecy to explain why privacy is now viewed as a hallowed right while\u003cbr\u003esecrets are condemned as destructive. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn delving into the dynamics of shame and guilt, \u003cem\u003eFamily Secrets\u003c\/em\u003e explores the part that families, so often regarded as the agents of repression, have played in the transformation of social mores from the Victorian era to the present day. Written with compassion and keen insight, this is a bold new argument about the sea-changes that took place behind closed doors.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDeborah Cohen\u003c\/strong\u003e is Ritzma Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at Northwestern University. She is the author of \u003cem\u003eHousehold Gods: The British and their Possessions \u003c\/em\u003eand \u003cem\u003eThe War Come Home: Disabled Ex-Servicemen in Britain and Germany, 1914-1939.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 400\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 1 x 9.1 x 6.1 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e January 01, 2017\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51753889366304,"sku":"9780190673499","price":64.96,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0974\/9764\/5344\/files\/6830e51ca7917ca081f4d55f72aa4aac.webp?v=1780028946","url":"https:\/\/ebocreations.com\/products\/family-secrets-shame-privacy-in-modern-britain-paperback","provider":"The E-Book Oasis LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}