Download or read book The Torment of Secrecy written by Edward Shils and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1996 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edward Shils's The Torment of Secrecy is one of the few minor classics to emerge from the cold war years of anticommunism and McCarthyism in the United States. Mr. Shils's "torment" is not only that of the individual caught up in loyalty and security procedures; it is also the torment of the accuser and judge. This essay in sociological analysis and political philosophy considers the cold war preoccupation with espionage, sabotage, and subversion at home, assessing the magnitude of such threats and contrasting it to the agitation - by lawmakers, investigators, and administrators - so wildly directed against the "enemy". Mr. Shils, widely regarded as one of the world's most influential social thinkers, has written an examination of a recurring American characteristic that is as timely as ever.