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The Journalist of Castro Street is the result of copious research and interviewing, though Stoner does not use the narrative style that makes some biographies read like novels. It’s a book by a professor of communication studies about a journalist. It looks at the ethical choice Shilts faced between objectivity and advocacy.

We are currently digesting abundant information about the networks of men the police called ‘sodomites’ before 1750 and ‘pederasts’ after that year.

Bentley knew Gibaut as a parishioner and as a student at Harvard when he entered in 1782, but the first mention of the young Gibaut in Bentley’s diaries was in 1786, when he was in trouble at Harvard (for reasons unknown; a reference to “bad habits”). However, Bentley wrote to the president of the university:More

Briefe über die Galantieren von Berlin has none of the militancy of the Encyclopedists. The polemic intent of the latter is charted by Robert Darnton in his Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (1995). The Austrian officer’s letters are leagues behind a work such as Thérèse philosophe (1748), for instance, in which free thinking is associatedMore

SUSAN S. LANSER, professor emerita of English, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Comparative Literature at Brandeis University, is a specialist in 18th-century European literature, with a focus on women writers and issues related to gender and sexuality.

THIS YEAR marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of Cyrano de Bergerac, but not the one you have in mind. Edmond Rostand’s hit play of 1897 invented an ultra-Romantic Cyrano, a magniloquent swashbuckler with a promontory of a nose. Hopelessly in love with his cousin Roxane, he sacrifices himself so she may wed theMore

In this new volume, [Peter Ackroyd has] written a concise history of “gay London” over two millennia. He begins with Londonium, the Roman city at the northern extreme of the Empire, and continues chronologically up to recent times.

The novel, Life of David Hockney, explores Hockney’s romantic relationships in detail. One longtime partner, Peter, is a student in a class Hockney teaches in L.A., “still a teenager” who came to the class by accident.

People I’ve Met from the Internet puts Van Dyck in the company of Rechy, Samuel Steward, and even Christopher Isherwood (especially his reconstructed diary, Lost Years) as experimental chroniclers of queer lives and times. The creativity of the form seems like something readers may wish they’d thought of themselves.

In the era before Stonewall, when gay men were forced to lead closeted lives, those who sought to express their sexuality, however furtively, were often victimized and even murdered for doing so. The press coverage of such attacks on gay men was distorted and sensational, and they often turned the victim into the criminal. InMore

While Madden hints that she was at least a little embarrassed that her mother was her father’s mistress, she nonetheless enjoyed the perks: Her father was a man of means and showered gifts and privileges on his daughter, including lavish vacations, horses, private schools, and the latest toys.

Martel’s book made the cover of Le Point (Feb. 14, 2019), France’s answer to Time magazine.

THE LATE ACTIVIST Eric Rofes championed a radical new way of thinking about gay men’s health … Two new books echo Rofes’ vision, digging deep into gay men’s hearts and psyches to reveal the wounds we carry and prescribe balms that can heal those wounds.

Editor Jason Baumann, the library’s assistant director for collection development, has assembled a first-rate anthology of pieces that tell the story of the first decade of the Stonewall era.

Film buffs will want to read Sleeping with Strangers, an analytical book that somehow maintains a dreamlike quality. Given the insanely messy connections between the sexual images we consume and our actual sex lives, all of us could probably use more time on the couch (this author included).

As Zeb Tortorici’s Sins Against Nature proves, the Catholic Church has meticulously investigated, documented, and largely kept silent on priestly sexual abuses for centuries.

Little did I grasp that I had stumbled upon one of the last remaining sites from a century-long history of queer life in Brooklyn. But that is one of the many things I learned in reading Hugh Ryan’s immensely absorbing .When Brooklyn Was Queer.

A vast number of the innovators who helped to bridge the classical world and the modern world were either gay, lesbian, or bisexual, starting with Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Isadora Duncan, and Ida Rubenstein.

Cheney captured a bleak, stark side of New England, too. His darker paintings, among his best, may well have been a response to Matthiessen’s urging him to explore all of his life experiences.

Tim Miller, interviewed by John R. Killacky: QUEER artist-­provocateur extraordinaire Tim Miller delights with the publication of A Body in the O (Wisconsin), featuring new stories and performance texts. Four decades into his singular career, Miller continues to mine autobiographical material to create politically charged, multidisciplinary theatrical works.

Takes on news of the day.

Letters to the Editor

THE THEME COLOR for this issue is gold, as befits the Age of Enlightenment, which is, after all, our civilization’s Golden Age, our answer to 5th-century Athens.

This documentary (Leaving Neverland) is tragic, riveting, and flawed. New challenges to its accounts have come out more recently, as construction documents reveal that a structure on Jackson’s property where [James] Safechuck claims to have been abused in 1992 was only built in 1994.

The religious Right has tacitly acknowledged the problem it has with the shrinking number of believers in the U.S. That’s why its leading evangelists are looking overseas for more fertile venues to peddle their hate.

Commented Richard Schneider: “Alistair was a wonderful writer and an amazingly quick study when breaking into a new field or genre. His interests ranged far and wide, and he soon branched off from workplace issues to LGBT rights, popular culture, history and biography, gay erotica, and so on.”

Patricia Nell Warren died in Los Angeles on February 9th at the age of 82.

If the vocals on Sing to Me Instead don’t give you the chills, you should see a doctor. On a twelve-track album that details numerous relationships, old and new, the strongest of the songs are “Ease My Mind” and “Grow As We Go.” The former, which dabbles in gospel music, allows [Ben] Platt to channelMore