Abstract
Playing off Goodall's title, A Need to Know, this author asks the question, “Do We Need to Know?” She views Goodall's book as a double spy story, one in which Buddy plays the role of an ethnographic spy who investigates his father's career as a CIA spy. Goodall's revelations about his family secrets prompt her to consider and raise issues about her own family secrets, for example, her role in contributing to and maintaining the mystery, the ramifications of the secrets her family failed to keep as well as the ones they kept, the influence of time and events on the perception of secrets, and how one decides the ethical dimensions and costs and rewards of telling and not telling.
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