DAVID HALPERIN has a distinguished history of setting aside accepted ways of thinking about gay men’s issues and examining them anew with a clarity and rigor that produce valuable and sometimes surprising insights.

THERE IS a growing literature attesting to the terrors and gothic comedies of growing up gay in the American South. With his memoir Kevin Sessums has produced a masterpiece that outshines all other contributions to this genre since Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms, and it will surely endure as one of the pre-eminent accounts.

… The editors of Queer Voices from Japan assembled the book to allow Japan’s sexual minorities past and present to speak for themselves. …

ALTHOUGH HE DIED IN 1994, Leo Lerman is still, thanks to the diligent efforts of editor Stephen Pascal, sharing his stories and comments about everyone who was anyone in New York for half a century-and still making us all envious of the frenetic, joyful, art-filled life he led.

CHINA’S VERTIGINOUS RISE as a global economic player is being watched with fascination by those who once dismissed China as a moribund Communist state. This change in perception has triggered an urgent need in the West for the production of knowledge about the country. Over fifty scholarly books have been published since 1990, and several more are forthcoming. Lisa Rofel’s collection of essays entitled Desiring China is the latest offering to a world eager to make sense of this “inscrutable” nation.

IN 1976, Jonathan Katz published one of the first comprehensive histories of same-sex sexuality in the United States. His Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. is credited with legitimating gay history as a viable subject for academic inquiry and providing a necessary starting point for this emerging field of study. Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America, contributes to and complicates this field considerably.