A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski

A Queer History of the United States Reviews

• 
  Justin Tate

  Michael Bronski is a badass LGBT historian whose contributions I've long followed. He always seems to be the go-to academic for scholarly introductions of significant gay novels, particularly major pop publications such as Richard Amory's Song of the Loon and William Carney's The Real Thing. Closest to my heart is his book Pulp Friction (2003) which is one of the earliest academic examinations of gay mass-market paperbacks of the 1960s and '70s.
  
  In this book, A Queer History of the United States (2011), Bronski has an even more ambitious goal—dissecting queer experiences throughout the entirety of American history. Or at least up to 1990. He considers more current developments "news" rather than history.
  
  Though the focus is obviously on queer issues, there is a significant discussion of American history in general. This isn't that surprising considering that major events for the general populous were also major events for gay Americans. The World Wars, for example, were often a place for sexual self-discovery and re-thinking gender expectations. We know Rosie the Riveter was significant to women in general but learning how this played into perceptions of lesbian women was new to me.
  
  Bronski's interest in pop culture yields valuable in other unexpected situations, such as when he unearths obscure Gold Rush-era poetry pining over erotic same-sex desire, the existence of celebrity nineteenth century drag performers, and other figures who were probably trans but in a time long before we had the proper vocabulary to identify them as such. Given how much same-sex desire has been oppressed over history, it is often startling to discover such records exist.
  
  I consider myself familiar with major gay events (Stonewall) and figures (Walt Whitman), but this book goes far beyond the basics. Bronski hits the highlights, but he doesn't linger too long on history that is largely familiar. Instead, his focus is on the more neglected details that you won't be able to read about anywhere else.
  
  Generally, the best thing about this book is Bronski's way of providing a queer lens to major American events. Studying history from minority points of view is critical to a more complete understanding of our country. I’m thrilled to see there’s a whole Audible series called "ReVisioning History" that takes on US history from African American, Latinx, Disability, Indigenous Peoples' and Black Women perspectives. History is an enormous, complicated, and multi-faceted experience for so many different groups of people. The only way to begin to understand the magnitude of our past is to see it from multiple angles. I'll definitely be checking out those other books in this series.
  
  Critics of Bronski's book seem to focus their concern on a lack of details around trans issues. They also point out that there is a greater focus on white gay men than gay men of color, or lesbians in general. I think these are fair critiques and point to the danger of trying to be the voice for an entire population, particularly a population as broad-reaching as "queer." I suspect the simple reality is that Bronski's area of expertise does not extend as well into those experiences. I understand how challenging it is to be an expert in any one thing, much less multiple things.
  
  Rather than fault him for this, let's recognize that a door is open for additional volumes to be written by someone who can fill in the gaps. Maybe that person is you? As Bronski notes, queer history is among the hardest history to uncover because so much of it happened in secret. We need more scholars who’re willing to dig through archives, read old newspapers, diaries and scraps of paper. We need people to tell the stories of queer persons from long ago. To acknowledge they existed, and to finally give them a voice. Don’t depend on someone else to write that book. If you do, there’s a good chance it’ll never be written.
  
  Overall, if you’re interested in history—queer or otherwise—this is a cleanly written, thoughtful, and well-researched place to start. The audio version is a great option for those who generally find history books tough to get through. Vikas Adam has a velvety voice that gives off sexy professor vibes. I could listen to him read anything!
• 
  V. Briceland

  A Queer History of the United States takes the Schoolhouse Rock approach to surveying queer culture in America. It's fast-moving, it hits all the expected high and low points, it's affirming, and it never explores its subject beyond cartoon depth. All it really lacks is a catchy tune.
  
  Though the book alleges to cover a period of time spanning from before 1492 to the present, its pre-colonial and colonial history is at best sketchy—in fact, just about anything before the turn of the twentieth century is simply a quick run-down of the usual literary and political suspects (Walt Whitman might've been gay, y'all!). And by 'the present', Bronski means 1990, the year at which he unapologetically cuts off his narrative.
  
  Bronski's gallop through several hundred years of history certainly covers a lot of territory, and for that it may be worth reading. Anyone expecting analysis or a critical eye may be disappointed to find that the read is a bit like attending a cocktail party and hearing all the expected names dropped, but not being able after to remember if anything interesting about them was said.
• 
  Cody VC

  Would be five stars if not for some significant flaws. I would recommend this for any introductory course on US history, as long as it was supplemented with other texts such as
  The Transgender Studies Reader.
  
  Bronski does a fair job including gender variance in the beginning, but peters out somewhere around the 1940s and never adequately recovers (not even a mention of Christine Jorgensen? Really?). Yet even the early mentions could have been handled better; for instance, Bronski says in the text that "berdache" is inaccurate and offensive, yet makes no attempt to use an alternative term--a failing made all the more striking when the book jacket captions one of the illustrations with the current term "two-spirit".
  (He also discusses a person who refused to use pronouns by repeatedly referring to this person as "her".)
  
  The book could also have benefited from one more look-over by an editor; I found a few typos here and there, and there were a couple of places where facts could have been introduced somewhat earlier in terms of narrative.
  
  I do still hope that this comes to be considered an important text, because it is sorely needed.
• 
  TheBookWarren

  4.50 Stars (Rnd down⬇️) — History is most horrifically but also most magnificently, subjective. This is indisputable. Yet, it is seldom the case that such stark & contrasting ‘versions’ of history can be reached, deduced, concluded, derived, forthwith & delivered in a vacuum, of differing brands— quite often — from the same brands own viewpoint.
  
  This is the type of History novel that the 21st Century now commands. No, make that demands. For all of this modern-times’ madness and eccentricities, revisionist history is most certainly one of the more robustly-endearing. Yet, I find it hard to delineate the obvious questions that arise from this brilliant and confronting type of historic-literary publication..
  
  For this reason, all I can say is.. Read this, then as I will, read the next instalments and before you read another page of History-books abound — Ask yourself if what you are about to read holds water or moreover, hold a candle to this high-bar indeed.
• 
  Jay

  Messy and not my jam. A number of pitfalls that are real...
  - centering whiteness
  - centering cis experiences, esp amab cis experiences
  - conflation of desire and labels gltbqqia
  - uncreative notions of what resistance can look like that glorify violent actions and invisibilze other ways ppl have resisted and survived
  
  where's the intersectional, anti-colonial framework to at least hold space for the possibility of radical kinds of queernesses throughout time?
  it's hard to write these histories in ways that don't fall into these (and other pitfalls), glad this author have it a go. but for real there need to be better books than this.
  anybody have other book suggestions?
• 
  laurel [the suspected bibliophile]

  A good primer for those just starting to read about LGBTQ+ history.
  
  Bronski takes a more diverse approach to centering marginalized groups within the LGBTQ+ community up until about the 1940s, where his focus narrows to mostly white gays and lesbians. There are some mentions of trans people (particularly in the 19th century), but no mentions of bisexual or asexual people, which is something other reviewers have mentioned.
  
  However, it's a good beginning point, as Bronski provides critique on the varying strengths, weaknesses and biases (both implicit and explicit) in social justice movements throughout history. Basically, what it boils down to is that the United States has always been queer, and it's always going to be queer as long as here is life on the North American continent.
• 
  Cee

  As a queer person and a historian especially interested in social history, I thought this book would be an interesting and enlightening read. While I did learn a few things and did more research about a few people, in general, I was extremely disappointed. This book was written by a cis white gay man, and that's VERY obvious.
  
  The only time Bronski mentions bisexual people is when describing/defining the LGBTQ+ acronym. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember him using the word to describe a person at all. He does mention bisexual people, but doesn't label them in such a way. He also implies at least once that bisexual people have chosen a "side" when they settle down with people of another gender; for example, he goes on about Ralph Waldo Emerson's potential queerness (he had homosexual thoughts about a fellow student when he was in school) and then says that it's surprising Emerson married a woman and had children. Emerson never gave himself a label or addressed his potential queerness, so I'm not asking Bronski to label him either. That said, it's damaging to bisexuals (like myself!) to assume that, if someone is interested in someone of the same gender, they can't be happy or involved with someone of another gender.
  
  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the book is focused heavily on white gay men. The next focus is white gay women. As a "queer" history book, I expected much more queer history - shocking, right? LGBTQ+ involves more groups than just the L and the G. I call myself queer because it's easier than explaining how I can be both bisexual and asexual. Reading this book and not seeing the word "asexual" at all is disheartening. We're part of the Q+ too.
  
  Similarly - and perhaps this is because I'm asexual - so much of the book is focused on "erotic"/sexual themes and lines. A person can be LGBTQ+ without having sex with someone of the same gender. We're not just sexual beings.
  
  As a cis person, the trans/nonbinary history presented here often made me uncomfortable. Sometimes, that can be good! I believe in challenging your beliefs and learning new things and new ways to be an ally. This is not that. An example: a preacher named the Public Universal Friend lived in New England. The Friend was assigned female at birth, but openly refused to identify with a gender or with gendered pronouns, two facts that Bronski admits. In the same breath, however, he refers to the Friend as "she." Ignoring the fact that the singular "they" goes back to the 14th century in English, the Friend's colleagues and acquaintances didn't use gendered pronouns for them. Why did Bronski feel the need to? I don't think that Bronski is intentionally transphobic, but it's very uncomfortable. (That said, he does refer to trans people as trans****ites several times, so maybe it is intentional. I'm not sure on the reclaiming status of that word, but as a cis person, I don't feel comfortable using it.)
  
  Bronski also centers most of the book on whiteness. Conflating fetishization of Native American and Black people with liberal attitudes toward culture and sexuality is, uh, Bad. For example, Morton and his Merrymount colonists recruiting Native women into their settlement so that they can intermarry with them almost certainly doesn't show a more tolerant social attitude.
  
  One of the few explicit mentions of non-white people is about b*rdaches, a term that Bronski admits is offensive to Native people. Doing even a small amount of Googling shows that the term two-spirit was first popularized in 1990 - twenty years before Bronski published his book - so his use of the slur (other than as an introductory term, since it was apparently in use in the 19th century) is unnecessary and harmful.
  
  I recognize that evidence of LGBTQ+ people in American history is regrettably sparse, even though we've always been here. That said, this book does little to be intersectional or challenging. There's a lot of dichotomy and little depth.
• 
  Degenerate Chemist

  DNF at 140 pages.
  
  This is poorly researched pop history. The sweeping generalizations and lack of evidence used in the arguments was fantastically annoying. The focus of this title is on white Queer folk. I wasn't expecting a deep analysis from a book that was only 200 pages but the writing is truly pathetic.
  
  This might be worth your time if you don't know anything about the topic, but honestly you'll learn more from half an hour talking to people on the Queer side of tumblr.
• 
  Collin

  when were y'all going to tell me that Rita Mae Brown, the author of the cat-themed popular cozy mystery series Mrs. Murphy, which I used to shelve all the time when I was a library page, was also a lesbian guerrilla activist in the 60s-70s and was in a relationship with FANNIE FLAGG?
• 
  Lauren Stoolfire

  I'd seen this nonfiction history book making the rounds at the library quite a bit recently so I thought I'd give the audiobook edition a try. The narrator does a very good job presenting the information. The book is a great primer on the subject and it covers a few hundred years - like the author says there is so much more out there especially if you were to do a deep dive on a particular time period or figure. On the bit about free love, I was pleased to hear Victoria Woodhull get a mention.
• 
  A.E. Bross

  My spouse recommended this book to me, and I can honestly say that it is worth the read. I do have to caution y'all, though. This book was published ten years ago, and obviously researched prior to that. It also only covers until the 1990s. The author uses a lot of language that is rigidly binary (constant use of "he or she" as opposed to using more inclusive terms like "they") and there's more than one instance of bi and pan erasure (i.e. people were either gay or they were straight, with little to no mention of bi- or pan-sexuality).
  
  Once you're aware of that, though, the book outlines just how much more queer our history really is. The LGBTQIA+ community has had a hand in forming more of the "morals" that we have today, usually because their mere existence was so frightening to the straights that they instituted strict laws and rules that were often just overlooked. The history of LGBTQIA is a history of mostly straight, cis, white men to control the acceptability of desire, and has many, many intersections with feminism, racism, and ableism. And while I'm sure we can giggle about Kellogg inventing corn flakes in the hopes of making a "healthy, ready-to-eat anti-masturbatory morning meal," this writing reminds us that LGBTQIA individuals of all backgrounds have fought and died for the right to simply be themselves. While not the easiest read, it was definitely informative, and brought a lot of historical events and relationships into the light.
  
  
• 
  Saige

  This book was informative, but it missed the mark for me. It spent a lot of time talking about attitudes towards sexuality and gender in early America, yet a lot of the arguments were hard to follow. It would touch on subjects that I thought needed more explanation and do deep dives into topics that I found too shallow to warrant the attention. I liked the emphasis it placed on the authors and texts that shaped the movement, but sometimes the examples provided didn't mesh well with the paragraphs around them. There was also a decided lack of transitions. It switched amongst topics in a chapter and I was left searching for a connection that wasn't there. I learned some new facts, but overall this is definitely not one of my top texts for LGBT history.
• 
  BAM the enigma

  A great resource of homoerotic literature
• 
  psuedoamazon

  This book is exclusionary.
  I was very excited to read this book but ended up being very disappointed.
  
  Trans people, lives and activism are completely erased from this book. This book EXCLUDES entirely the involvement of trans women in the Stonewall Riots.
  
  Bisexuality is excluded.
  
  I found this book to focus too much on the activism of cis white gay men with some support from cis white lesbian women.
  
  Race is brought up occasionally, but not with the depth that queer BIPOC deserve.
  
  If you are looking for an inclusive book about queer lives, activism and history in the US, look elsewhere because this is not it.
• 
  haleykeg

  disappointed because I've enjoyed the others in the series, but this is almost exclusively a white cis gay male's history of the united states, with some mention of white women, so to call it an all encompassing queer history is willful ignorance at best. also, a lot of atrocities are glossed over using passive language.
• 
  Izzy Patoon

  Kinda bad ngl
  Boring and somehow not gay enough
• 
  Madeline

  A Queer History of the United States was a transformative read for me on multiple levels. Although I can’t totally quantify the depth of healing it provided for my own internalized homophobia, heteronormativity, dissatisfaction with most modern queer representation (archetypes of gay people in entertainment), and lack of understanding of the gender binary, I can say that this book was a deeply educational experience. It cleared a lifetime of smog, teaching me what school never did and helping me to understand and exorcise preconceived notions about my own identity.
  
  As they say, education/the truth will set you free. In the wake of the Don’t Say Gay Bill in Florida, the comments on “defending” marriage between man and woman from the LDS church, the Catholic Church saying that we can be gay but not act on it, and the daily thrum of homophobia in my own lived experiences, this book helped manage some of my own fears. Understanding the historic puritanical moral panic and the cyclical attempts to discredit and destroy queerness and control gender narratives, as well as the queer activism that has buoyed queer lives, makes me feel far more hopeful in the fight against homophobia.
  
  Learning about the various philosophies surrounding queerness and the roots of many modern day representations of queerness in entertainment makes me feel free to create my own philosophies on queerness. Free to develop my own identity, be my own person. This changed my feminism, my intellectual outlook, everything. Left me hungry for more history, more philosophy.
  
  🌈❤️
  
  
  Some other reviews are essentially calling this the cinematic Mickey Mouse version of queer history because, I assume, the book sweeps through history from the founding of the United States to the AIDS crisis in less than 400 pages... of course, with such a page limit and when writing an easily digestible historical account of an incredibly nuanced concept such as queerness, there will be holes, people omitted, stories bubbled down to the bones. Things will get left out.
  There were sections that were too sparse, like the lack of information on the Stonewall riots or the speeding through of the feminist movement that left out so much information. I was also disappointed in how the racism or class disparities in many of the gay movements, like ACT UP, was barely touched on... the racism of the original white lesbian trailblazers was discussed, but not the racism of the gay male activists. Transphobia was also touched on maybe once and non-binary identities not really discussed. Not as much history on working class or POC queers, but, Bronson acknowledges this is due to social class disparities with publishing and visibility in the public sphere.
  
  I also really did not appreciate the recurring use of the word “homosexual” throughout the book, but that rises from a personal philosophy more aligned with Whitman’s view of queerness than Ulrich’s.
  
  So yes, there were issues. There are more histories that need to be written and more voices uncovered. Each topic, if given justice, would have its own book.
  
  HOWEVER, as it stands, this is a necessary read for any who wish to truly understand American culture and the ways it has both shaped the queer experience and been shaped itself by queerness. It will provide a fantastic foundation for conceptualizing modern queer issues, activism, and homophobia.
  If you are queer and have failed to understand your own existence in the United States, this book may even be healing for you, like it was for me.
• 
  Rory Wilson

  Overall I think this is an accessible and good premier into lesbian and gay history. I did enjoy the book's repeated references to various literary influences on queer movements and the broader culture. I also was very interested in the chapters describing the formation of masculinity and feminity in the US.
  
  However, I think the book is primarily centered around a white gay and lesbian history at the sacrifice of transgender, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, QTPOC history. I felt that at the very least there were points where asexual and bisexual/pansexual identities could have been mentioned in places like describing Boston marriages between women. It could simply be noted that some of these women may have been otherwise queer than just lesbians. Otherwise, I felt a lot of transgender history and QTPOC history was mainly mentioned in passing.
  
  Book is still definitely worth a read if one is interested in learning more about queer history in the US generally.
  
  
• 
  John Wiswell

  An excellent history of the rise of attitudes around homosexuality and bisexuality in the United States. It alerted me to several pivotal events and cultural hot spots I hadn't heard of before. However, the does a much less thorough job discussing trans issues, and other queer identities like intersex and asexuality are not included at all. I'm very glad I read it and it's helped me look for further reading, but it's not comprehensive.
• 
  Tex Reader

  3.5 of 5 stars – A Good, Broad Historical Perspective of the American LGBTQ Experience.
  
  What a fine compilation of the LGBTQ story over the last FIVE CENTURIES. Bronski does a good job of taking a high-level, broad-brush approach to the historical, sociological, cultural evolution of the LGBTQ experience. Even so, I also feel he could have related even more of the underlying individual psychological factors and more intense emotions and motivations that might connect readers to the times, which may be why this seemed more academic and intellectual.
  
  One reason I like history is to see how previous events and cultures lead to what we experience today. Bronski’s book definitely gives me that in spades. I liked how throughout he interrelated the gay history and movement with other non-gay issues and movements, be they racial, women’s rights, labor, gender issues, war protests. This lent insight on some of the underlying cultural and psychological desires and fears at the times, leading up to today.
  
  I appreciated the breadth, and reasonable depth, which unfortunately the latter had to be understandably sacrificed for the sake of the former. Which was fine by me, because I have not seen anyone bring the length & breadth together as Bronski does. I particularly appreciate his coverage of the earlier years, about which there would understandably be less known – so I’m actually surprised that he was able to pull in as much as he did.
  
  Spanning the 500 years he writes about both public as well as maybe not necessarily apparent, subtle, behind-the-scenes, even unconscious influences, people and events. He reveals numerous stories and details of people, events, and the arts that are little-known – at least to me, and I assume to most others. After all, I ran into many people who had seen a recent hit show in Chicago, Hit the Wall, about the Stonewall uprising, who were unaware of it as part of our history, or actually thought it was urban myth.
  
  Maybe because I’m more familiar with it, and thus have my own POV, I think he overstates the influence of LGBTQ on America over the last 50 years, even stating – ”LGBT people … have made America what it is today.” Definitely contributed, but not as exclusively as that sounds – I think he needed to take a step back to view the whole picture and balance LGBTQ’s influence with what all else was going on and influencing culture, politics, and “life” in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and even 80’s. For example, with his telling so well about the increased amount of LGBTQ events and public presence and acceptance, I think he leaves the false impression that society was more accepting than it actually was.
  
  I liked Bronski’s writing style. I’m a history buff, so even though some may find the book dry, I thought Bronski kept things interesting and moving along nicely, with the information and analysis keeping me engaged throughout. Even more, one thing I would have loved, since it is historical in nature, is to supplement the text with pictures. The visuals would have reinforced and made the stories more vivid.
  
  Overall it’s a broad, interesting historical perspective of the LGBTQ experience in America.
  
  [Gay Men’s Book Group-Chicago monthly selection]
• 
  Joe Kessler

  This 2011 title should really have been called "A Gay and Lesbian History of the United States," due to how little it addresses the remainder of the LGBT+ acronym. The treatment of transgender people is particularly egregious, presenting just a few isolated examples of individuals living as genders not assigned to them at birth and ignoring their known preference of names and pronouns when it does. Yes, this is somehow a queer studies text that deadnames and misgenders its subjects -- which is all the more frustrating given how author Michael Bronski repeatedly cautions us not to project modern labels onto residents of the past, like calling Daniel Webster gay when he wouldn't have necessarily understood himself in that fashion, despite writing to a dear companion that he longed to hold him again in their small shared bed. I can understand the argument, but that (along with sheer human decency) should likewise guide us to accept the stated identity of someone like the Publick Universal Friend.
  
  Narrowing our scope to simply an account of same-sex attraction in this nation, this is an informative overview. It highlights how there have always been Americans who had relations in that arena even before it was conceptualized as a particular orientation or community, and discusses how evolving media and cultural norms gradually produced the social configuration of queerness as it exists today (or as it did in the 1990s, since the book covers only through the AIDS crisis). Bronski is an older gay man himself, and he's good at explaining topics like how widespread availability of the birth control pill for straight couples inadvertently helped other sexualities gain acceptance, by unlinking sex from procreation in the public mind. I've also enjoyed his descriptions of how instances of coded homosexuality in mid-century movies and literature were recognized as points of similarity by folks who defied gender preconceptions themselves, well ahead of the mainstream catching on.
  
  Overall this is a limited and flawed work, but I'd say it's still generally worthwhile if approached with the proper expectations. It explores a subject totally left out of traditional textbooks, and that's valuable no matter the clumsy handling of specific items outside the writer's area of expertise.
  
  [Content warning for homophobia and racism including lynching.]
  
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• 
  Johann Jacob

  What I expected: A queer history of the US.
  
  What I did not expect: A thoughtful, “a-ha moment”-filled investigation into the invention of the heteronormative society that characterizes the contemporary US. From pre-colonial attitudes to homosexuality and homosociality, through the efforts of the Puritans and the invention of the “rough, tough Marlboro Man” American male intentionally drifting from a more genteel, erudite British gentlemanliness, the writers’ communities and social movements within the nineteenth century and thoughtful review of the impact of the world wars of the 20th century on American family values, this book just kept surprising page after page.
  
  What I came away with: A contextual understanding of this country, its values and how those perceived values have been manipulated to lean towards heteronormative values. Increased vigor to encourage the LGBTQ community to carve its own path. And an understanding that the most successful activism stands in solidarity with all marginalized groups inside and outside of the queer community.
  
  I believe this book is FUNDAMENTAL to understanding where we are at this moment in time. Strongly recommend.
• 
  J.C.

  This is the textbook for my gay/lesbian literature class. I found this book a very wonderful "history book" style story of the queer community. At times its more about the events and the order of history, but putting about 500 years in context really put in perspective for me the struggles of these people. It's certainly not perfect, like I said it's very history book-ish, therefore it doesn't cover everything. In fact it ends with the AIDS epidemic of the 80's. Certainly things have changed since then (he mentions this in the epilogue but doesn't really give much beyond that, for whatever reason).
  
  Recommended if you want a basic history of queer history, but if you're already knowledgeable in the subject, I don't think there's much here for you that you might not already know.
• 
  Jane

  The book's thesis is that queer US history is US history-- that the two are inseparable-- and I suppose it succeeds in conveying this. However, the sheer task of compressing 500 years of history from the Puritans to the AIDS epidemic into 300 pages results in a book that feels like a litany of important names and events. I think it would have benefited a lot from just focusing on a handful of events with more depth and nuance. Should also be noted that the focus is primarily on people who identify as gay or lesbian, with very little writing afforded to bisexual, non-binary (outside of cross-dressing), and other identities.
• 
  Haven

  A Queer History of the United States is useful only for gaining a brief outline of how the homosexual culture has affected the country as a whole. The research is shoddy and often uses accepted 'facts' that are actually false or at the least unprovable - James Dean was a homosexual, Eleanor Roosevelt had lesbian affairs. The writing itself is dry and finishing the book was a chore. I recommend the book only to those who are interested in using it to further research the homosexual culture - if you're looking for an overview of its' history find a more reliable source.
• 
  Lee

  It's an admittedly ambitious project to try and cover 500 years of queer history in roughly 250 pages, but I was disappointed that Bronski adopted such a dichotomous approach (you're either gay or straight/either male or female). There were some compelling sections, and he certainly did his research, but it ultimately felt like too much breadth, not enough depth.
• 
  Yaaresse

  It's possible that the excellent first book I read in this series -- which turns out to have been the last one published -- ruined me for the rest of the series, but I found this one to be nowhere near as interesting nor readable. Bronski is living proof that straight, affluent white men of a certain age do not have the monopoly on being pedantic, presumptive, or mansplaining.
  
  Bronski began annoying me with the "there's nothing to assume they didn't" (emphasis mine) when speculating whether two women had a sexual relationship. This is supposed to be history, not a gossip column. Yes, I know the arguments about how difficult it is to document the sex lives of historical people, but that means historians must work harder and smarter, not just indulge in wishful thinking with the caveat of "there's nothing to say it didn't happen that way." He seems fixated on the idea that no one can be "just" friends, especially if they are of the same gender. He also presumes to put thoughts or assign motives to people without much proof. "He must have thought..." or "we can assume she..." Sources, please. And where there is no hard documentation, let's have something more persuasive than assumptions and wishful thinking.
  
  Of the Gilded Age, he writes, "The nation was now composed of people who varied in race, ethnicity, class, and identities." Really? So before the Industrial Age, it was composed of people who were all exactly identical in those attributes? I know most of our history books read like white, landholding, Protestant men were the only ones here, but....
  
  In several places, he describes "gay men who had sex with women" as if the word "bisexual" doesn't exists. He labels Pauli Murray as "a closeted lesbian." Murray was well-known (and respected) in a town I lived in, and I don't think anyone there would describer her as "closeted" anything. There has been some debate as to whether Murray should be described as transgender; unfortunately, she's no longer alive to say, and it wouldn't have been a word she'd encounter until near the end of her life. These are just a few examples, but I basically found this book's focus was very tight: gay, male, white, binary, privileged. Add to this that the pacing was awkward and disjointed, and it made reading it a chore.
  
  I could go on, but I this book took up more than enough of my time already. I'd rather find a better book than spend any more time thinking about this one.
  
• 
  Nate

  From Native American berdaches to ACT UP, this book follows the attitudes and treatment of LGBTQ people in the United States.
  
  As a gay man and a history buff, I enjoyed Bronski’s take the major events in world history and how they affected the LGBTQ population. For a long time our history was left out of history books, but Bronski does a good job and showing modern LGBTQ people how our predecessors mattered in the past, changed attitudes in their societies to allow the environment, while not ideal decidedly better than in Oscar Wildes time, in which we live today.
  
  I would have preferred more specific stories on, say, Rustin’s contributions to the Civil Rights movement, or Eleanor Roosevelt’s sway with her husband. But since this book encompasses over 300 years I understand why some stories had to be skimmed over.
  
  I have seen other reviewers on Goodreads comment that certain communities were underrepresented in the book. That is true, but Bronski makes a point to say in the beginning that GLBTQ history is difficult to prove. Records actively leave out or codify facts that would have gotten their subjects thrown in jail or killed. Sexualities of people from the past cannot be proven. And retrofitting common identities we know today to people who lived in sexually repressed societies would not be ethical or accurate. Plus, we can’t expect an author writing in 2011 to be up on the common parlance of 2020.
  
  I was disappointed to find no mention of Abraham Lincolns’ possible bisexuality. But, again, it cant be substantiated. Men in that time shared beds and we cannot know if they had sex while doing so. Men and women in that time wrote romantic and emotional letters to their friends that sound very much to people living today like love letters. But we cannot know.
• 
  Derek L.

  This certainly was a very educational read for me.
  
  As a gay man in his early thirties (of which, if this were 1950s USA, I would be considered a pervert for being gay, single, and in his 30s), this was a very much-needed read. I knew little about LGBT history, and for that I needed to fix this issue. This book was a great introduction to the LGBT perspective on history.
  
  I had a lot of positive, "wow" moments in reading this book. One such instance was discovering that in the 1800s, Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president. There were also a handful of negative, "WTF" moments, of which one occured while completing the book tonight. It was disheartening to learn there were people who advocated for tattooing AIDS folks on the buttocks "to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals" (p. 230).
  
  The only issue I had with the book itself was Bronski's early treatment of close, same-sex friendships. I had the sense that he was claiming these earlier US citizens of being gay, when it has been indicated by other historians that same-sex friendships were taken more seriously in the past, than contemporary, same-sex friendships. Not to say they aren't today, but they did have a different intimacy then "bromances" of the 21st century. It was common for siblings to share a bed, bur that does not automatically make a person gay (back then). I may be wrong, but most families couldn't afford more than one/two beds in the earlier days of the USA.
  
  This most certainly was a great, educational book, one I will reference at some point in the future.