Books by Sarah E. Igo

Every day Americans make decisions about their privacy: what to share, how much to expose to whom. Securing the boundary between private affairs and public identity has become a central task of citizenship. Sarah Igo pursues this elusive social value across the twentieth century, as individuals asked how they should be known by their own society.

Americans today "know" that a majority of the population supports the death penalty and that half of all marriages end in divorce. But such data became common currency only in the last century. Igo demonstrates the power of scientific surveys to shape Americans' sense of themselves as individuals, members of communities, and citizens of a nation.