Books, Gay & Lesbian, History

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George Chauncey
Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940
by Basic Books (Paperback)

Winner of the 1994 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, this brilliant work challenges the conventional wisdom that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet.

Michael Warner
The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life
by Free Press (Hardcover)

John Boswell
Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century
by University Of Chicago Press (Paperback)

John Boswell's highly acclaimed study of the history of attitudes toward homosexuality in the Christian West challenges received opinion and our own preconceptions about the Church's past relationship to its gay members, among whom were priests, bishops and even canonized saints. The historical breadth of Boswell's research (from the Greeks to Aquinas) and the variety of sources consulted (legal, literary, theological, artistic, and scientific) make this one of the most extensive treatments of any single aspect of Western social history. The product of ten years of research and analysis of records in a dozen languages, this book opens up a new area of historical inquiry and helps elucidate the origins and operations of intolerance as a social force. "What makes this work so exciting is not simply its content--fascinating though that is--but its revolutionary challenge to some of Western culture's most familiar moral assumptions." --Jean Strouse, Newsweek "Truly ...

Lillian Faderman
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (Between Men--Between Women)
by Penguin (Non-Classics) (Paperback)

An account of lesbian life in the twentieth century traces the evolution of lesbian identity, discussing the establishment of lesbian subcultures in each decade, examines how feminism and gay liberation have destigmatized lesbianism, and more. Reprint.

Neil Miller
Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present
by Advocate Books (Paperback)

A unique and hugely absorbing narrative history of gay life-from Oscar Wilde to the first gay marriage performed in San Francisco in 2004-by the award-winning journalist and distinguished author of Out in the World and Sex- Crime Panic. Miller accompanies his narrative with essays and excerpts from contemporary and historical writings, and the text is illustrated with photos and line drawings. Neil Miller is the author of Sex-Crime Panic and winner of the 2003 Randy Shilts Award for nonfiction and an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. He is also the author of In Search of Gay America, winner of the 1990 American Library Association prize for gay and lesbian literature. He teaches journalism and nonfiction writing at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

Catalina de Erauso, Michele Stepto, Catalina De Erauso, Gabri Stepto
Lieutenant Nun
by Beacon Press (Paperback)

Gerald Clarke
Capote: A Biography
by Da Capo Press (Paperback)

Based on hundreds of hours of interviews with the man who authored In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's, as well as with nearly everyone who knew him, this absorbing, definitive biography follows Truman Capote from his eccentric childhood in Alabama to the heights of New York society. Featuring many photographs, this book also candidly recounts a gifted and celebrated writer's descent into the life of alcohol and drugs that would ultimately consume his bulldog spirit and staggering talent—but not before he'd hobnob with the likes of Grace Paley and Lee Radziwill, feud outrageously with Gore Vidal and Jacqueline Susann, and stage at New York's Plaza Hotel the sensational Black and White Ball.

Louis Crompton
Homosexuality and Civilization
by Belknap Press (Paperback)

How have major civilizations of the last two millennia treated people who were attracted to their own sex? In a narrative tour de force, Louis Crompton chronicles the lives and achievements of homosexual men and women alongside a darker history of persecution, as he compares the Christian West with the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, Arab Spain, imperial China, and pre-Meiji Japan. Ancient Greek culture celebrated same-sex love in history, literature, and art, making high claims for its moral influence. By contrast, Jewish religious leaders in the sixth century B.C.E. branded male homosexuality as a capital offense and, later, blamed it for the destruction of the biblical city of Sodom. When these two traditions collided in Christian Rome during the late empire, the tragic repercussions were felt throughout Europe and the New World. Louis Crompton traces Church-inspired mutilation, torture, and burning of "sodomites" in sixth-century Byzantium, medieval France, ...

Evan Bachner
Men of WW II: Fighting Men at Ease
by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (Hardcover)

The long awaited follow up to the original At Ease presents 160 new, never before published photographs of WWII Navy men. These photos are not the combat photography we’re so accustomed to seeing; here are disarmingly winsome and playful pictures of sailors and soldiers at leisure, displaying an innocent affection for each other that is practically unthinkable today. This was a time when men had no reservations about showing their devotion to their comrades through physical contact, and the included photographs are truly snapshots of a lost era. This volume includes photos from the National Archives by Edward J. Steichen, Wayne Miller, Horace Bristol, Victor Jorgensen, Barrett Gallagher, and many others.

Judith C. Brown
Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (Studies in the History of Sexuality)
by Oxford University Press, USA (Paperback)

The discovery of the fascinating and richly documented story of Sister Benedetta Carlini, Abbess of the Convent of the Mother of God, by Judith C. Brown was an event of major historical importance. Not only is the story revealed in Immodest Acts that of the rise and fall of a powerful woman in a church community and a record of the life of a religious visionary, it is also the earliest documentation of lesbianism in modern Western history. Born of well-to-do parents, Benedetta Carlini entered the convent at the age of nine. At twenty-three, she began to have visions of both a religious and erotic nature. Benedetta was elected abbess due largely to these visions, but later aroused suspicions by claiming to have had supernatural contacts with Christ. During the course of an investigation, church authorities not only found that she had faked her visions and stigmata, but uncovered evidence of a lesbian affair with another nun, Bartolomeo. The story of the relationship ...

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