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Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present
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.
677 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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July 29, 2020
Don’t tell Maria Von Trapp and all those Viennese kids but Walt Whitman “said goodbye with ‘so long,’ an idiom he associated with sailors and prostitutes.”
An early white anthropologist on ‘berdache’ in Native American cultures: “There is a side to the lives of these men which must remain untold. They never marry women, and it is understood that they seldom have any relations with them.” .... dot dot dot ...
I love the berdache and want to read more! “The Lakota Sioux chief, Crazy Horse, is said to have one to two winkte in addition to female wives.” and “Men took on berdache status in a number of ways. Sometimes they acquired the attributes of ‘two-spirit’ people as a result of dreams. In some tribes, male children who seemed to prefer female pursuits would be tested to see if they should take the berdache role. Among the Mohave of the American Southwest, such a boy (usually of age ten) would be surrounded by members of the tribe, and a singer, hidden from sight, would perform particular songs. If the boy began to dance like a woman (meaning with great intensity), he assumed ‘two-spirit’ status. … Among the Papago Indians of Arizona, as late as the 1930s, such a test involved building a small brush enclosure in which members of the tribe placed a man’s bow and arrows and a woman’s basket. A boy who displayed berdache inclinations was brought to the enclosure … Once he was inside, the adults set fire to the enclosure. They watched what the child took with him as he fled: if he took the woman’s basket he would become a berdache.” Fascinating, huh? And so … like… I don’t mean to be flippant … but they sound like concepts for TV shows, don’t they? “America’s Got Queer Eye Judging Your Gay Dancing” or something.
Anyway, lots of Europeans hated the berdache. Nuno de Guzman – a nasty piece of work – recalled “'a man in the habit of a woman, which confessed that from a child he had gotten his living by that filthiness, which I caused him to be burned.'” Vasco Nunez be Balboa had 40 “sodomites” eaten by his dogs … “'a fine action of an honourable and Catholic Spaniard,' as one chronicler described it.” “By the 1820s another missionary … was able to report that while Joyas [berdache in California] were once very numerous, 'at the present time this horrible custom is entirely unknown among them.'” “Indian Boarding Schools were a focus for the assimilation of Indians into white culture.” One young person was taken to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania and “Since he was dessed as a girl, he was assumed to be female and placed in a girl’s dormitory; the other Navajo students protected him. However, during a lice infestation in which all the girls were scrubbed, it was discovered that this student was actually a male. He was removed from school and never seen again.” A Lakota Sioux medicine man said “'They began to look down on the winkte and lose respect. The missionaries and the government agents said winktes were no good, and tried to get them to change their ways. Some did, and put on men’s clothing. But others, rather than change, went out and hanged themselves. I remember the sad stories that were told about this.'”
“Mrs Nash was the company laundress of General Armstrong Custer’s Seventh US Cavalry. She remained with the regiment from 1868 to 1878, married to one soldier after the next. In the summer of 1878, Mrs Nash died … while the corporal she was living with was off fighting Indians. The ladies of the garrison prepared her body for burial, and it was then that they made an astonishing discovery: Mrs Nash was actually a man. (She had always been heavily veiled when she appeared in public.) When her corporal-lover returned home, he was ridiculed unceasingly by his fellow-soldiers. He shot himself to death.” Sad, huh? And “shot himself to death” sounds like he had to shoot more than once, don’t you think? God, what a nightmare.
When they arrested Oscar Wilde, Bosie fled to Paris and “Some 600 people made the Channel crossing from Dover to Calais on a night when typically only 60 would have done so … 'Never was Paris so crowded with members of the English governing classes … It was even said that a celebrated English actor took a return ticket … just to be in the fashion.'”
J.R. Ackerley was encouraging E.M. Forster to be more open about his homosexuality, like André Gide. “But Gide hasn’t got a mother!” was the reply.
The Sunday Express on The Well of Loneliness…. “'I would rather give a healthy boy or healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel. Poison kills the body, but moral poison kills the soul.'” So dramatic! It reminds me of the Lucille Bluth quote about gays, “Everything they do is so dramatic and flamboyant. It makes me want to set myself on fire.”
Radclyffe Hall: “By the late 1930s, she and Una were living in Florence, singing Mussolini’s praises, and blaming the Jews for Europe’s problems.” Yikes! Step away from the rightists, gays. Always.
You knew Tchaikovsky was gay … but did you know Tchaikovsky’s brother was gay? And called “Modest”?
And did you know Vladimir Nabokov was mean about his gay brothers? One of them was “a harmless, indolent, pathetic person who spent his life vaguely shuttling between the Quartier Latin and a castle in Austria.” Bit catty, Vladimir.
Maxim Gorky: “In the fascist countries, homosexuality, which ruins youth, flourishes without punishment; in the country where the proletariat has audaciously achieved social power, homosexuality has been declared a social crime and is heavily punished. There is already a slogan in Germany, ‘Eradicate the homosexual and fascism will disappear.’” Eyeroll.
“There is no doubt, however, that men who were put in camps for being homosexual were not able to take advantage of the financial restitution which the West German government offered to Jews, political prisoners, and other groups that had survived the camps.” Ugh.
“World War II marked the first time in which the US military screened for homosexuality, asking young men, ‘Do you like girls?’ … Suddenly those attracted to members of the same sex had an identity, at least in the eyes of the military.”
In January 1957: “'It is not within the province of the [American Civil Liberties Union] to evaluate the social validity of the laws aimed at the suppression or elimination of homosexuals,'” Yeah cheers thanks a lot ACLU.
Monty hated gays! In the decriminalisation debates that set the age of consent at 21 in 1967, he argued that it should be 80! “It wasn’t until 13 years and innumerable parliamentary debates later that, in 1980, law reform was extended to Scotland.” It came into force on 1 February 1981, with the age of consent at 21.
Jack Kerouac: “Not too many good vibrations in Tangier … Mostly fags abound in this sinister international hive of queens.” Later, William S. Burroughs wrote that “Tangier is finished. The Arab dogs are upon us. Many a queen has been dragged shrieking from the Parade, the Socco Chico, and lodged in the local box where sixty sons of Sodom now languish … the boys, many beaten to a pulp, have spelled a list of hundreds.”
Time Magazine on Other Voices, Other Rooms: “'the distasteful trappings of its homosexual theme overhang it like Spanish moss.'” Which is quite a gay way of being mean about gays, no? "distasteful trappings ... overhang it like Spanish moss"?
Tennessee Williams: “'When your candle burns low, you’ve got to believe that the last light shows you something besides the progress of darkness.'”
James Baldwin: “I wish I had heard him more clearly: an oblique confession is always a plea. But I was to hurt a great many people by being unable to imagine that anyone could possibly be in love with an ugly boy like me…” and “Best advice I ever got was an old friend of mine, a black friend, who said you have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.”
Pat Bond: “Yeah, there was a lot of pressure to look butch … So I would affect how I stood, and you learned to walk like a man with a grim look on your face – that suggested maleness, somehow, being grim.”
When a Miami gay bar gets busted: “'Damn, not only is my life ruined, but the whole evening is spoiled.'”
“'No longer is the claim made that gay people can fit into American society, that they are as decent, as patriotic, as clean-living as anyone else. Rather, it is argued, it is American society itself that needs to change.'”
“'We are no longer willing to be the token lesbians in the women’s liberation movement nor are we willing to be the token women in the Gay Liberation Front.'”
“'What is a lesbian? A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion…'”
Lesbianism… “'offers escape from the silly, stupid, harmful games than men and women play, having the nerve to call them “relationships.”'”
Thatcher in October 1987: “'Children who need to be taught to respect traditional values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay,'”
On Section 28: “Once again, attempts to repress homosexuality had wound up only giving it more visibility, ‘promoting’ it more strongly than the ‘loony left’ councils ever had.”
Simon Nkoli: “When more than 70 people showed up at the first meeting, Nkoli was stunned. ‘I believed I was the only black gay in South Africa,’ he said.”
“'These guys who operate multimillion-dollar aircraft and tanks are afraid someone’s going to hit on them. Maybe they’ll understand how women feel all the time.'”
Navratilova: “'I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had careers,'”
9/11: “There were at least 22 known surviving same-sex partners of the terror attacks, and some Christian Right leaders opposed the use of federal funds to assist them. Public and private relief agencies, said the Rev Lou Sheldon … ‘should be giving first priority to those widows who were at home with their babies and those widowers who lost their wives. Assistance should be given on the basis and priority of one man and one woman in a marital relationship.’”
An early white anthropologist on ‘berdache’ in Native American cultures: “There is a side to the lives of these men which must remain untold. They never marry women, and it is understood that they seldom have any relations with them.” .... dot dot dot ...
I love the berdache and want to read more! “The Lakota Sioux chief, Crazy Horse, is said to have one to two winkte in addition to female wives.” and “Men took on berdache status in a number of ways. Sometimes they acquired the attributes of ‘two-spirit’ people as a result of dreams. In some tribes, male children who seemed to prefer female pursuits would be tested to see if they should take the berdache role. Among the Mohave of the American Southwest, such a boy (usually of age ten) would be surrounded by members of the tribe, and a singer, hidden from sight, would perform particular songs. If the boy began to dance like a woman (meaning with great intensity), he assumed ‘two-spirit’ status. … Among the Papago Indians of Arizona, as late as the 1930s, such a test involved building a small brush enclosure in which members of the tribe placed a man’s bow and arrows and a woman’s basket. A boy who displayed berdache inclinations was brought to the enclosure … Once he was inside, the adults set fire to the enclosure. They watched what the child took with him as he fled: if he took the woman’s basket he would become a berdache.” Fascinating, huh? And so … like… I don’t mean to be flippant … but they sound like concepts for TV shows, don’t they? “America’s Got Queer Eye Judging Your Gay Dancing” or something.
Anyway, lots of Europeans hated the berdache. Nuno de Guzman – a nasty piece of work – recalled “'a man in the habit of a woman, which confessed that from a child he had gotten his living by that filthiness, which I caused him to be burned.'” Vasco Nunez be Balboa had 40 “sodomites” eaten by his dogs … “'a fine action of an honourable and Catholic Spaniard,' as one chronicler described it.” “By the 1820s another missionary … was able to report that while Joyas [berdache in California] were once very numerous, 'at the present time this horrible custom is entirely unknown among them.'” “Indian Boarding Schools were a focus for the assimilation of Indians into white culture.” One young person was taken to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania and “Since he was dessed as a girl, he was assumed to be female and placed in a girl’s dormitory; the other Navajo students protected him. However, during a lice infestation in which all the girls were scrubbed, it was discovered that this student was actually a male. He was removed from school and never seen again.” A Lakota Sioux medicine man said “'They began to look down on the winkte and lose respect. The missionaries and the government agents said winktes were no good, and tried to get them to change their ways. Some did, and put on men’s clothing. But others, rather than change, went out and hanged themselves. I remember the sad stories that were told about this.'”
“Mrs Nash was the company laundress of General Armstrong Custer’s Seventh US Cavalry. She remained with the regiment from 1868 to 1878, married to one soldier after the next. In the summer of 1878, Mrs Nash died … while the corporal she was living with was off fighting Indians. The ladies of the garrison prepared her body for burial, and it was then that they made an astonishing discovery: Mrs Nash was actually a man. (She had always been heavily veiled when she appeared in public.) When her corporal-lover returned home, he was ridiculed unceasingly by his fellow-soldiers. He shot himself to death.” Sad, huh? And “shot himself to death” sounds like he had to shoot more than once, don’t you think? God, what a nightmare.
When they arrested Oscar Wilde, Bosie fled to Paris and “Some 600 people made the Channel crossing from Dover to Calais on a night when typically only 60 would have done so … 'Never was Paris so crowded with members of the English governing classes … It was even said that a celebrated English actor took a return ticket … just to be in the fashion.'”
J.R. Ackerley was encouraging E.M. Forster to be more open about his homosexuality, like André Gide. “But Gide hasn’t got a mother!” was the reply.
The Sunday Express on The Well of Loneliness…. “'I would rather give a healthy boy or healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel. Poison kills the body, but moral poison kills the soul.'” So dramatic! It reminds me of the Lucille Bluth quote about gays, “Everything they do is so dramatic and flamboyant. It makes me want to set myself on fire.”
Radclyffe Hall: “By the late 1930s, she and Una were living in Florence, singing Mussolini’s praises, and blaming the Jews for Europe’s problems.” Yikes! Step away from the rightists, gays. Always.
You knew Tchaikovsky was gay … but did you know Tchaikovsky’s brother was gay? And called “Modest”?
And did you know Vladimir Nabokov was mean about his gay brothers? One of them was “a harmless, indolent, pathetic person who spent his life vaguely shuttling between the Quartier Latin and a castle in Austria.” Bit catty, Vladimir.
Maxim Gorky: “In the fascist countries, homosexuality, which ruins youth, flourishes without punishment; in the country where the proletariat has audaciously achieved social power, homosexuality has been declared a social crime and is heavily punished. There is already a slogan in Germany, ‘Eradicate the homosexual and fascism will disappear.’” Eyeroll.
“There is no doubt, however, that men who were put in camps for being homosexual were not able to take advantage of the financial restitution which the West German government offered to Jews, political prisoners, and other groups that had survived the camps.” Ugh.
“World War II marked the first time in which the US military screened for homosexuality, asking young men, ‘Do you like girls?’ … Suddenly those attracted to members of the same sex had an identity, at least in the eyes of the military.”
In January 1957: “'It is not within the province of the [American Civil Liberties Union] to evaluate the social validity of the laws aimed at the suppression or elimination of homosexuals,'” Yeah cheers thanks a lot ACLU.
Monty hated gays! In the decriminalisation debates that set the age of consent at 21 in 1967, he argued that it should be 80! “It wasn’t until 13 years and innumerable parliamentary debates later that, in 1980, law reform was extended to Scotland.” It came into force on 1 February 1981, with the age of consent at 21.
Jack Kerouac: “Not too many good vibrations in Tangier … Mostly fags abound in this sinister international hive of queens.” Later, William S. Burroughs wrote that “Tangier is finished. The Arab dogs are upon us. Many a queen has been dragged shrieking from the Parade, the Socco Chico, and lodged in the local box where sixty sons of Sodom now languish … the boys, many beaten to a pulp, have spelled a list of hundreds.”
Time Magazine on Other Voices, Other Rooms: “'the distasteful trappings of its homosexual theme overhang it like Spanish moss.'” Which is quite a gay way of being mean about gays, no? "distasteful trappings ... overhang it like Spanish moss"?
Tennessee Williams: “'When your candle burns low, you’ve got to believe that the last light shows you something besides the progress of darkness.'”
James Baldwin: “I wish I had heard him more clearly: an oblique confession is always a plea. But I was to hurt a great many people by being unable to imagine that anyone could possibly be in love with an ugly boy like me…” and “Best advice I ever got was an old friend of mine, a black friend, who said you have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.”
Pat Bond: “Yeah, there was a lot of pressure to look butch … So I would affect how I stood, and you learned to walk like a man with a grim look on your face – that suggested maleness, somehow, being grim.”
When a Miami gay bar gets busted: “'Damn, not only is my life ruined, but the whole evening is spoiled.'”
“'No longer is the claim made that gay people can fit into American society, that they are as decent, as patriotic, as clean-living as anyone else. Rather, it is argued, it is American society itself that needs to change.'”
“'We are no longer willing to be the token lesbians in the women’s liberation movement nor are we willing to be the token women in the Gay Liberation Front.'”
“'What is a lesbian? A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion…'”
Lesbianism… “'offers escape from the silly, stupid, harmful games than men and women play, having the nerve to call them “relationships.”'”
Thatcher in October 1987: “'Children who need to be taught to respect traditional values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay,'”
On Section 28: “Once again, attempts to repress homosexuality had wound up only giving it more visibility, ‘promoting’ it more strongly than the ‘loony left’ councils ever had.”
Simon Nkoli: “When more than 70 people showed up at the first meeting, Nkoli was stunned. ‘I believed I was the only black gay in South Africa,’ he said.”
“'These guys who operate multimillion-dollar aircraft and tanks are afraid someone’s going to hit on them. Maybe they’ll understand how women feel all the time.'”
Navratilova: “'I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had careers,'”
9/11: “There were at least 22 known surviving same-sex partners of the terror attacks, and some Christian Right leaders opposed the use of federal funds to assist them. Public and private relief agencies, said the Rev Lou Sheldon … ‘should be giving first priority to those widows who were at home with their babies and those widowers who lost their wives. Assistance should be given on the basis and priority of one man and one woman in a marital relationship.’”
July 7, 2013
This was very similar to the LGB class I took at my school. The information covers from 1869, starting with Walt Whitman, to about 1995 with Clinton being the president. It would be interesting to see an updated version covering the past two decades.
This is an essential book to read for LGBT history though it focuses mostly on Lesbians and Gays, there are a few pieces on Transgender people and some notable bisexuals are mentioned as well.
It is also notable that there is some global prespective too, it is not just about the U.S. and Western Europe (though that is the main focus) but there are entries about Soviet and post-soviet Russia, China, Japan, South Africa, Cuba, and Argentina.
This is an essential book to read for LGBT history though it focuses mostly on Lesbians and Gays, there are a few pieces on Transgender people and some notable bisexuals are mentioned as well.
It is also notable that there is some global prespective too, it is not just about the U.S. and Western Europe (though that is the main focus) but there are entries about Soviet and post-soviet Russia, China, Japan, South Africa, Cuba, and Argentina.
January 14, 2018
I really enjoyed this book in the beginning, when it focused on the personal/historical aspect of pre-modern gay individuals, but as the book progressed I felt like it began to focus and dwell almost exclusively, with painstaking attention to detail, on the sexual and political aspects of mostly male gay life and identity.
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March 20, 2014It was an insight on the occidentaland Western European and North American queerness, but it lacks a more insightful look at a more world wide view on homosexuality.
February 24, 2025
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.
September 10, 2020
There's a lot to like about this book...its a very detailed history of gays and lesbians and it does try to tell the histories of both men and women equally, which not all histories of this sort do. There's interesting information here and a wealth of suggested books one could read after this if one was interested. My biggest problem with the book is the massive amount of typos it contains...often at least one every few pages. One more proof reading pass would have increased my enjoyment quite a bit.
August 29, 2022
I really wanted to love this book but the chapter are to much disconnected between them evn in them sometime we seems to past from one thing to another randomly. The information itself is interesting its the transition between part that doesnt do it for me
April 14, 2023
An exhaustive analysis of gay history that covers up to the mid-1990s with high precision. The end-of-chapter stories were uniformly interesting, the photos great, and the research exhaustive. Well worth a read.
October 7, 2024
A thoroughly researched primer (although hopefully the newer editions include trans narratives) with an abundant bibliography. For obvious reasons it is difficult to read about suffering for large periods of time but there’s plenty here meriting contemplation.
December 10, 2023
Interesting and very detailed in some areas but a bit disjointed in others.
December 7, 2023
Overall a very thorough coverage of wide range of time periods. There were some topics that I already knew about, but I learned so much from reading this book. I’d recommend to anyone interested in learning more about LGBT history.
February 22, 2023
I read this about ten years ago and at that point it was ten years since publications. I can't fault its attempts at comprehensiveness but it is not a scintillating read, more a textbook. At the time it was first published there had been no concept of, or really acknowledgement that such things deserved a history, it and other books like it were needed for the new gay and lesbian history courses.
As I said it tries to be comprehensive and although lots of different countries and cultures are touched on it is really a book looking at the USA with more on the UK and then flying visits around Europe and the rest of the world. This was inevitable, their hadn't been time for many places to begin their liberation path let alone chronicling their individual gay pasts. The USA provided immense inspiration and example but at times it's story tended to be seen as emblematic, if not a blue print for the narrative of gay history. Now I would hope we recognise that the understanding of 'gay' history, even in the USA, is more varied and complex then first appeared. The life of gays and lesbians in the 1950s had little relationship to what it was in 1920 or 1890 never mind 1790 and even then what you could say had to be heavily qualified according to country, region, city and culture.
This is not a bad book, but it is of its time and I would never say don't use it, but I would hope if you want to know the truth you would read other more recent works.
As I said it tries to be comprehensive and although lots of different countries and cultures are touched on it is really a book looking at the USA with more on the UK and then flying visits around Europe and the rest of the world. This was inevitable, their hadn't been time for many places to begin their liberation path let alone chronicling their individual gay pasts. The USA provided immense inspiration and example but at times it's story tended to be seen as emblematic, if not a blue print for the narrative of gay history. Now I would hope we recognise that the understanding of 'gay' history, even in the USA, is more varied and complex then first appeared. The life of gays and lesbians in the 1950s had little relationship to what it was in 1920 or 1890 never mind 1790 and even then what you could say had to be heavily qualified according to country, region, city and culture.
This is not a bad book, but it is of its time and I would never say don't use it, but I would hope if you want to know the truth you would read other more recent works.
May 5, 2013
I have been immersed in this book for a little over a month, and it has been one of the more fascinating reading experiences I have had in a very long time. As one who has come fairly lately (at least openly) to the ongoing LGBT debate, I feel that my eyes have been opened by Miller's work. Exhaustively researched and personably written, it invites the uninitiated into a world redefined: I have met many of my favorite historical personages again, in many ways for the first time, and I have a much better understanding of the role played by gays and lesbians in the unfolding history of the last century and a half. I'm left wishing that more mainstream accounts of history would incorporate more of these elements, and I am left hopeful (if Miller is correct in his assessment of the inevitability of the LGBT movement) that one day this will be the case. Given developments in the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" saga since Miller wrote his book, he may be right.
Although he does tend to "out" historical figures from time to time without much evidential support, he is careful to point out that, given the very different mores of the earlier periods in his narrative, it is both tempting to assume and difficult to prove more than the evidence allows. He cautions care on the part of the reader in making these logical leaps; however, he also points out that these very mores that make it hard to determine the Victorian sexual identity are more likely to suggest that the true identity might be hidden beneath the different language used to describe it.
Miller is also very fair, as open about the negative aspects of the gay and lesbian movement as he is about the good ones. This provides a well-rounded picture of gay and lesbian history, and succeeds in underscoring the basic humanity of the LGBT community, with all the strengths and weaknesses shared by the rest of us.
His dates also leave a little to be desired at times (he describes, for example, the death of Harvey Milk at one point in 1977, followed shortly by a photo of Milk following his city council election in 1978). However, these are minor points that in no way diminish the impact of the work as a whole. Anyone who is interested in learning more about the LGBT movement would do well to start right here.
Although he does tend to "out" historical figures from time to time without much evidential support, he is careful to point out that, given the very different mores of the earlier periods in his narrative, it is both tempting to assume and difficult to prove more than the evidence allows. He cautions care on the part of the reader in making these logical leaps; however, he also points out that these very mores that make it hard to determine the Victorian sexual identity are more likely to suggest that the true identity might be hidden beneath the different language used to describe it.
Miller is also very fair, as open about the negative aspects of the gay and lesbian movement as he is about the good ones. This provides a well-rounded picture of gay and lesbian history, and succeeds in underscoring the basic humanity of the LGBT community, with all the strengths and weaknesses shared by the rest of us.
His dates also leave a little to be desired at times (he describes, for example, the death of Harvey Milk at one point in 1977, followed shortly by a photo of Milk following his city council election in 1978). However, these are minor points that in no way diminish the impact of the work as a whole. Anyone who is interested in learning more about the LGBT movement would do well to start right here.
March 23, 2011
This is a wonderful book - moving, engaging, accessible, and as comprehensive as any book on a 'community' bound only by their sexuality can be - covering Oscar Wilde and Harvey Milk, gays in the military, Japanese samurai warriors, lesbian-feminist activists, the AIDS epidemic. But the idea of a gay community is something Miller comes back to repeatedly in this book - how often the gay and lesbian community has been fractured and divided by the fact that the only common link is sexuality, that even the very concept of a group linked only by sexuality would have been considered almost inconceivable as recently as fifty years ago.
Activists like to talk of 'gay history', but Miller makes it clear that there is no such thing, that the idea of a 'gay identity' is a recent construct, and that whilst homosexuality has existed for as long as there have been people, the notion of defining one's identity by it is a very recent development.
And it can only be a positive one, in my view. This is an incredibly moving book, filled with testimony and stories from real people who have fought and struggled and argued for tolerance and equality their entire lives, as well as excerpts from literature, news publications, essays and other contemporary sources. The edition of the book I read finished in the early 90s with the election of Bill Clinton, but I believe there was an updated edition published a few years ago that brings things up to date.
Activists like to talk of 'gay history', but Miller makes it clear that there is no such thing, that the idea of a 'gay identity' is a recent construct, and that whilst homosexuality has existed for as long as there have been people, the notion of defining one's identity by it is a very recent development.
And it can only be a positive one, in my view. This is an incredibly moving book, filled with testimony and stories from real people who have fought and struggled and argued for tolerance and equality their entire lives, as well as excerpts from literature, news publications, essays and other contemporary sources. The edition of the book I read finished in the early 90s with the election of Bill Clinton, but I believe there was an updated edition published a few years ago that brings things up to date.
February 12, 2008
Tremendously interesting and engaging "textbook" on gays and lesbians in Western history since 1869. But, don't let the word "textbook" make you shy away - this is really readable and so, so enjoyable. Lots of sidebars and excerpts from primary sources break up the secondary source analysis. Attempts to provide a balanced look across Western culture, though the emphasis is on America with pokes here and there at Japan and Africa, too. Very little on transgendered and transsexual people, and it tends to focus a little more on the male experience than the female, but very highly recommended nonetheless. If I had to choose one book on gays and lesbians in Western culture to take with me to a desert island, this would definitely be it.
March 26, 2009
This was a fairly comprehensive, and therefore long, overview of a gay and lesbian perspective on history over the last 150 or so years. While the authors made a point of covering gay issues from all over the world, most of the history was a bit Eurocentric, so that was a little disappointing. Then again, it was already long and being any more broad in scope would have simply made it longer, so maybe it was a good choice to limit most of the coverage to Europe and the United States. Overall this is a good book for grasping many of the root concepts concerning gay rights and gay identity, though it does read a lot like a text book and, therefore, may not appeal to some people.
August 28, 2010
Very academic, but mostly readable in spite of that, possibly because everything is presented in short, almost anecdotal bursts. Primarily covers the history of gay men in the US (and to some extent the UK) with a little lesbian history, and occasional coverage of other countries like Germany, Japan and Africa. And, it ends with the beginnings of the Clinton administration, so it's not even particularly up to date anymore.
December 13, 2008
This is the definitive history of the gay adventure/journey. Reading it caused me to purchase no fewer than fifty new books on the topic. You have to love history and sociology to make it to the end of this book...which I do, so I reveled in it!
May 6, 2012
I read this book a few years ago, i found it very informative and helped my put some of my own history and experience in place. I grew up not knowing most of this and was/am facinated that it was all happening around me and i did not even know.
August 22, 2012
This is a great history and very readable. I whipped through most of the book. When it got to the era where I was affected by the history it too me longer to read merely because of the emotions and memories it brought back. Great read.
June 23, 2012
Details, details... An in depth history that, thankfully, doesn't limit itself to the USA. Very well worth the read if you're interested in how the LBGT community has been shaped, or if you're interested in the changes society in general has come through.
July 3, 2012
maybe the subtitle of "gay and lesbian history" should've tipped me off, but this book is the absolute worst at that thing where you talk about trans history without being a cissexist, misgendering asshole (aka, talk about trans history accurately w/r/t identity and pronoun choice)
February 22, 2008
An excellent primer! But Miller doesn't pay nearly enough attention to the traditionally less enfranchised within the queer community - so don't take it as the whole story.
February 17, 2012
an excellent general history of GLBT studies around the world, though largely with a focus on the west, especially the US
November 2, 2009
One of those books that is a must read for our generation. To understand what came before, and how much further we have to go.
January 21, 2012
A well-written and accessible history of homosexuality from 1869 to present. A must-read for anyone even mildly interested.
August 18, 2015
Pretty good overview of gay and lesbian history. Whoever copy edited this book did a terrible job, though.
July 10, 2013
I liked the book, but there were a lot of minor grammatical errors, like leaving out "the" or leaving off the d for a past tense verb, that distracted from the flow.
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August 15, 2013306.76609 M6494 1995
November 9, 2010
Started reading but sadly did not have time to finish it. Good as far as I got, though.
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