Patricia A. McDaniel brings shyness out of the closet in this carefully-researched and well-written social history. In documenting how shyness served social functions in the past, she explains why it has been transformed into a personal failing today. As Americans have become increasingly outgoing, gregarious and assertive, and as friendliness has become increasingly marketable, shyness has become a disease-one the pharmaceutical companies and clinicians are eager to treat with best-selling drugs like Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft. Shrinking Violets and Caspar Milquetoasts is the first book to examine shyness in all its historical and sociological complexity. Highly recommended. -Scott Coltrane,University of California, Riverside In this thoroughy researched study, McDaniel pretty much provides anything any academic might ever want to kow about shyness in society. -Library Journal Patricia McDaniel provides an insightful look at the historical construction of shyness in Western society. This book is an important contribution to the literature on the sociology of emotions and the sociology of gender. -Contemporary Sociology This book's significance lies in its treatment of an emotional state and in its use of documents that have heretofore received little attention from historians. -The Jourrnal of American History