The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village. At a little after one a.m. on the morning of June 28, 1969, the police carried out a routine raid on the bar. But it turned out not to be routine at all. Instead of cowering - the usual reaction to a police raid - the patrons inside Stonewall and the crowd that gathered outside the bar fought back against the police. The five days of rioting that followed changed forever the face of lesbian and gay life. In the years since 1969, the Stonewall riots have become the central symbolic event of the modern gay movement. Renowned historian and activist Martin Duberman now tells for the first time the full story of what happened at Stonewall, recreating in vivid detail those heady, sweltering nights in June 1969 and revealing a wealth of previously unknown material.^

"Harvey Milk--eloquent, charismatic, and a smart-aleck--was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, but he had not even served a full year in office when he was shot by a homophobic fellow supervisor. Milk's assassination at the age of forty-eight made him the most famous gay man in modern history; twenty years later Time magazine included him on its list of the hundred most influential individuals of the twentieth century. Before finding his calling as a politician, however, Harvey variously tried being a schoolteacher, a securities analyst on Wall Street, a supporter of Barry Goldwater, a Broadway theater assistant, a bead-wearing hippie, the operator of a camera store and organizer of the local business community in San Francisco. He rejected Judaism as a religion, but he was deeply influenced by the cultural values of his Jewish upbringing and his understanding of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. His early influences and his many personal and professional experiences finally came together when he decided to run for elective office as the forceful champion of gays, racial minorities, women, working people, the disabled, and senior citizens. In his last five years, he focused all of his tremendous energy on becoming a successful public figure with a distinct political voice."--Dust jacket.

"Harvey Milk was one of the first openly and politically gay public officials in the United States, and his remarkable activism put him at the very heart of a pivotal civil rights movement reshaping America in the 1970s. An Archive of Hope is Milk in his own words, bringing together in one volume a substantial collection of his speeches, columns, editorials, political campaign materials, open letters, and press releases, culled from public archives, newspapers, and personal collections. The volume opens with a foreword from Milk's friend, political advisor, and speech writer Frank Robinson, who remembers the man who 'started as a Goldwater Republican and ended his life as the last of the store front politicians' who aimed to 'give 'em hope' in his speeches. An illuminating introduction traces GLBTQ politics in San Francisco, situates Milk within that context, and elaborates the significance of his discourse and memories both to 1970s-era gay rights efforts and contemporary GLBTQ worldmaking"--Publisher description

In Love Stories, Jonathan Ned Katz presents stories of men's intimacies with men during the nineteenth century--including those of Abraham Lincoln--drawing flesh-and-blood portraits of intimate friendships and the ways in which men struggled to name, define, and defend their sexual feelings for one another. In a world before "gay" and "straight" referred to sexuality, men like Walt Whitman and John Addington Symonds created new ways to name and conceive of their erotic relationships with other men. Katz, diving into history through diaries, letters, newspapers, and poems, offers us a clearer picture than ever before of how men navigated the uncharted territory of male-male desire.

The members of the literary circle known as the Violet Quill -- Christopher Cox, Robert Ferro, Michael Grumley, Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, Edmund White, and George Whitmore -- collectively represent the aspirations and the achievement of gay writing during and after the gay liberation movement. This social history shows how the works of these authors both reflected and criticized the values, principles, and prejudices of the culture of gay liberation. In spinning many of the most important stories gay men told of themselves in the short period between the 1969 Stonewall Riots and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic during the 1980s, the Violet Quill exerted an enormous influence on gay culture.

Reviving the Tribe creates a rich and brutally honest portrait of contemporary gay men’s lives amidst the seemingly endless AIDS epidemic and offers both autobiographical self-examination and a relentless critique of current sexual politics within the gay community. Fearlessly confronting the horrors experiences by surviving gay men without giving way to hopelessness, denial, or blame, Reviving the Tribe offers an inspiring blueprint for the gay community which faces a continuing spiral of disaster.In Reviving the Tribe, Author Eric Rofes argues that a return to the interrupted agenda of gay liberation may provide long-term motivation to keep gay men alive and spur rejuvenation of new generations of gay culture. By interweaving social history, psychology, anthropology, epidemiology, sociology, feminist theory, and sexology with his own journey through the epidemic, Rofes provides a moving and compelling argument for stepping out of the “state of emergency” and embracing a life beyond disease. He boldly offers a plan for community regeneration focused on restoring mental health, reclaiming sexuality, and mending the social fabric of communal gay life. Rofes asks unspoken questions lurking in gay men’s minds and suggests answers to these questions, hitting such controversial topics as: gay men’s sex cultures of the 1970s why “educated” gay men continue to become HIV-infected changing forms of gay masculinity the opening of new sex clubs and bathhouses leaving “rage activism” behind links between the Holocaust and AIDS unacknowledged roots in the feminist movement of gay men’s AIDS response mass denial of chronic trauma among gay menThe refusal to confront the ever-intensifying manifestations of AIDS has seriously endangered the foundation of contemporary gay communities. Rofes argues that many gay men suffer from the ”disaster syndrome,” a psychologically determined response that defends individuals against being overwhelmed by traumatic experience. In Reviving the Tribe, he provides a radical critique of contemporary gay political culture and suggests alternatives which offer the opportunity to face history, grapple with decimation, and regenerate communal life.Cautioning that an honest analysis of recent gay history and urban cultures promises neither to stop gay men’s suffering nor to end continuing HIV infections, Reviving the Tribe provides gay men with a clear lens through which they might scrutinize their lives, come to a new understanding of the epidemic’s impact on their generation, and redirect activism. This courageous and inspiring work brings Rofes’commanding intellect and twenty years of grassroots gay activism to bear on the challenging task of reconstructing gay life in the new mellennium. Reviving the Tribe is filled with insight of special interest to gay men, lesbians involved in the mixed lesbian/gay movement, sociologists, public health workers, psychologists, counselors, sex educators, religious leaders, and AIDS prevention policymakers searching for fresh vision.

For gays and their friends, this book confronts the social and personal issue of suicide with compassion and hope.

Winner of two Lambda Rising Awards This richly revealing anthology brings together for the first time the vital new scholarly studies now lifting the veil from the gay and lesbian past. Such notable researchers as John Boswell, Shari Benstock, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Jeffrey Weeks and John D’Emilio illuminate gay and lesbian life as it evolved in places as diverse as the Athens of Plato, Renaissance Italy, Victorian London, jazz Age Harlem, Revolutionary Russia, Nazi Germany, Castro’s Cuba, post-World War II San Francisco—and peoples as varied as South African black miners, American Indians, Chinese courtiers, Japanese samurai, English schoolboys and girls, and urban working women. Gender and sexuality, repression and resistance, deviance and acceptance, identity and community—all are given a context in this fascinating work. "A landmark of a book and a landmark of ideas that will shatter ignorance and delusion."— Catharine Stimpson, University Professor and Dean Emerita of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University “Ground-breaking.”— Publishers Weekly “The juxtaposition of diverse perspectives and research crossing boundaries of race, gender, culture, and time encourages a lively dialogue. Highly recommended for history collections, and especially gay studies.”— Library Journal

A memoir by a man born with disabled legs traces the history of his body from birth, through the many reconstructive surgeries he underwent, to his sexual awakening, all the while touching on the life of his working-class, Jewish family

When Joel Derfner's boyfriend proposed to him, there was nowhere in America the two could legally marry. That changed quickly, however, and before long the two were on what they expected to be a rollicking journey to married bliss. What they didn't realize was that, along the way, they would confront not just the dilemmas every couple faces on the way to the altar—what kind of ceremony would they have? what would they wear? did they have to invite Great Aunt Sophie?—but also questions about what a relationship can and can't do, the definition of marriage, and, ultimately, what makes a family. Add to the mix a reality show whose director forces them to keep signing and notarizing applications for a wedding license until the cameraman gets a shot she likes; a family marriage history that includes adulterers, arms smugglers, and poisoners; and discussions of civil rights, Sophocles, racism, grammar, and homemade Ouija boards—coupled with Derfner's gift for getting in his own way—and what results is a story not just of gay marriage and the American family but of what it means to be human.

"German, Jew, Muslim, Gay offers an astonishing perspective on the history of modern Germany through the vantage point of a man with multiple identities who devoted his life to religious utopias, fought for homosexual rights, wrote gay fiction, converted from Judaism to Islam (one of the few of any faith to do so), and considered himself part of a spiritual elite that held the key to Germany's salvation. Born in Posen in 1880, the son of a Jewish industrialist, Hugo Marcus converted to Islam and chose the name Hamid; he became the most important convert in Germany while retaining his membership in the Jewish community. He was renamed Israel by the Nazis and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1938, where he was in the unique position of Muslim witness to the Holocaust. The imam of his mosque gained his release and he escaped to Switzerland, where he wrote gay fiction under the pen name Hans Alienus. He died in Basel in 1966. The book challenges deeply ingrained perceptions of Muslim-Jewish relations during World War II and illuminates their interconnected histories in modern Europe. It also tells the unknown story of Marcus' orientalized Islam that, in echoing Goethe's, revitalized an essential strand of Germany's spiritual heritage"--

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Who was Sappho? How gay was the Renaissance? When were the first sodomy laws passed in America? Were there any gay heroes in the American Revolution? Were "passing" women lesbians? Who was Walt Whitman? Who was Karl Heinrich Ulrichs? How did San Francisco become so gay? Was Susan B. Anthony a lesbian? Who were the "berdaches"? Who was Katharine Lee Bates? What was the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee? What were Oscar Wilde's trials about? What is the history of gay bathhouses? When did American gays, lesbians, and others first start calling themselves "queer"? Who was E.M. Forster? Who were Havelock Ellis and Edith Lees Ellis? How gay was the Harlem Renaissance? Who were Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas? Who was Willa Cather? What was the Leopold and Loeb case? Who was Natalie Barney? What was the first gay rights organization in America? Who was Janet Flanner? What was the "Padlock" Bill? What was The Well of Loneliness? Who was Babe Didrikson Zaharias? Was Eleanor Roosevelt a lesbian? What was The Children's Hour? What happened to gays and lesbians during the Holocaust? Who were some of the lesbians in Hollywood's golden age? What is the origin of the phrase "a friend of Dorothy's"? Who were Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead? What were the army drag shows during World War II? What were "blue discharges"? When did the American gay and lesbian press begin? How gay were Tennessee Williams's plays? What was the Kinsey Report? What were the lesbian pulp novels of the 1950s? What were physique magazines? Who was Christine Jorgensen? What was the Mattachine Society? How did McCarthyism affect gays and lesbians? Who were the Daughters of Bilitis? Who was Rudi Gernreich? Who was James Baldwin? What was the Boise Sex Scandal? What was Evelyn Hooker's research about? What was the Wolfenden Report? Who was Lorraine Hansberry? What was the Supreme Court's first pro-gay ruling? What have gays and lesbians experienced in revolutionary Cuba? Who was Bayard Rustin? What was NACHO? What is the origin of the annual gay and les

A wry and beautifully observed memoir about coming of age in the era of conceptual art. Growing up in the suburbs—confused about his sexuality, about his consumer-oriented world, about the death of his older brother—Bernard Cooper falls in love with Pop art and sets off for the California Institute of the Arts, the center of the burgeoning field of conceptual art, in this beguiling memoir. The most famous, and infamous, artists of the time drift through the place, including Allan Kaprow and John Baldessari, not to mention the student who phones the Identi-Kit division of the Los Angeles Police Department and has them make a composite drawing of the Mona Lisa . My Avant-Garde Education is at once an artist's coming-of-age story and a personal chronicle of the era of conceptual art, from a writer "of uncommon subtlety and nuance" (David Ulin, Los Angeles Times ). It is a record of the wonders and follies of a certain era in art history, always aware that awakening to art is, for a young person, inseparable from awakening to the ever-shifting nature of the self.

David Leavitt brings the wonders and mysteries of Florence alive, illuminating why it is, and always has been, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. The third in the critically-acclaimed Writer and the City Series-in which some of the world's finest novelists reveal the secrets of the cities they know best- Florence is a lively account of expatriate life in the 'city of the lily'. Why has Florence always drawn so many English and American visitors? (At the turn of the century, the Anglo-American population numbered more than thirty thousand.) Why have men and women fleeing sex scandals traditionally settled here? What is it about Florence that has made it so fascinating-and so repellent-to artists and writers over the years? Moving fleetly between present and past and exploring characters both real and fictional, Leavitt's narrative limns the history of the foreign colony from its origins in the middle of the nineteenth century until its demise under Mussolini, and considers the appeal of Florence to figures as diverse as Tchaikovsky, E.M. Forster, Ronald Firbank, and Mary McCarthy. Lesser-known episodes in Florentine history-the moving of Michelangelo's David , and the construction of temporary bridges by black American soldiers in the wake of the Second World War-are contrasted with images of Florence today (its vast pizza parlors and tourist culture). Leavitt also examines the city's portrayal in such novels and films as A Room with a View , The Portrait of a Lady and Tea with Mussolini .

"A breathtaking historical novel that recreates the intimate milieu around Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm from 1907 through the 1930s, a period of great human suffering and destruction and also of enormous freedom and creativity, a time when the remnants and artifices of the old word still mattered, and yet when art and the social sciences were pirouetting with successive revolutions in thought and style. Set in a time when many men in the upper classes in Europe were gay, but could not be so publicly, Jews Queers Germans revolves around three men: Prince Philipp von Eulenburg, Kaiser Wilhelm II's closest friend, who becomes the subject of a notorious 1907 trial for homosexuality; Magnus Hirschfeld, a famed, Jewish sexologist who gives testimony at the trial; and Count Harry Kessler, a leading proponent of modernism, and the keeper of a famous set of diaries which lay out in intimate detail the major social, artistic and political events of the day and allude as well to his own homosexuality. The central theme here is the gay life of a very upper crust intellectual milieu that had a real impact on the major political upheavals that would shape the modern world forever after"--

Anka Muhlstein's lively biography, translated by Teresa Waugh, introduces American readers to Astolphe de Custine, a passionate literary figure, a poet, playwright, essayist, traveler, aristocrat and homosexual adventurer. Against the fascinating background of early-19th-century France, Anka Muhlstein presents the gifted if at times deplorable Custine with vivacity, elegance, and insight. It is a splendid introduction to the Marquis and his world and to his famous 1839 tour of autocratic Russia -- Daniel Aaron. Briliant, visionary, beautiful Astolphe -- man of letters and man of society -- finally gets his biography . . . -- French elle Magazine ... -- Amazon