According to Jeffrey Rosen, Louis D. Brandeis was "the Jewish Jefferson," the greatest critic of what he called "the curse of bigness," in business and government, since the author of the Declaration of Independence. Published to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of his Supreme Court confirmation on June 1, 1916, Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet argues that Brandeis was the most farseeing constitutional philosopher of the twentieth century. In addition to writing the most famous article on the right to privacy, he also wrote the most important Supreme Court opinions about free speech, freedom from government surveillance, and freedom of thought and opinion. And as the leader of the American Zionist movement, he convinced Woodrow Wilson and the British government to recognize a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Combining narrative biography with a passionate argument for why Brandeis matters today, Rosen explores what Brandeis, the Jeffersonian prophet, can teach us about historic and contemporary questions involving the Constitution, monopoly, corporate and federal power, technology, privacy, free speech, and Zionism. --

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.