Books, History, Gay & Lesbian

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Randy Shilts
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
by Stonewall Inn Editions (Paperback)

E. J. Graff
What is Marriage For?: The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution
by Beacon Press (Paperback)

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)

"Truly groundbreaking work. Boswell reveals unexplored phenomena with an unfailing erudition."—Michel FoucaultJohn Boswell's National Book Award-winning study of the history of attitudes toward homosexuality in the early Christian West was a groundbreaking work that challenged preconceptions about the Church's past relationship to its gay members—among them priests, bishops, and even saints—when it was first published twenty-five years ago. The historical breadth of Boswell's research (from the Greeks to Aquinas) and the variety of sources consulted make this one of the most extensive treatments of any single aspect of Western social history. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, still fiercely relevant today, helped form the disciplines of gay and gender studies, and it continues to illuminate 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 ...

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.

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.

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

Gay New York brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet, where gay men were isolated, invisible, and self-hating. Based on years of research and access to a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, this book is a fascinating portrait of a gay world that is not supposed to have existed.

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.

Heinz Heger
The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps
by Alyson Books (Paperback)

It has only been since the mid-1970s that any attention has been paid to the persecution and interment of gay men by the Nazis during the Third Reich. Since that time, books such as Richard Plant's The Pink Triangle (and Martin Sherman's play Bent) have illuminated this nearly lost history. Heinz Heger's first-person account, The Men with the Pink Triangle, was one of the first books on the topic and remains one of the most important. In 1939, Heger, a Viennese university student, was arrested and sentenced to prison for being a "degenerate." Within weeks he was transported to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp in East Germany, and forced to wear a pink triangle to show that his crime was homosexuality. He remained there, under horrific conditions, until the end of the war in 1945. The power of The Men with the Pink Triangle comes from Heger's sparse prose and his ability to recall--and communicate--the smallest resonant details. The pain and squalor of ...

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

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.

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