About this book

"These highly readable essays unite recent scholarship on the meaning and use of state power with investigations of the history of intimate experience-marriage, sexuality, reproduction, family life-exploring the porous boundaries between public and private realms. In analyzing the relationship between state power and intimate experience in the United States from the Civil War to today, this volume makes the case that "intimate governance"-the binding of our private daily experience to the apparatus of the state-should be central to our understanding of modern American history. For the state is always with us, even in our most private, seemingly independent actions"--