SEX PANIC and the Punitive State is part polemic, part social history, and part personal story about the policing of sexual behavior in the United States.

THIS BOOK is the first in a Beacon Press series, “ReVisioning American History,” that’s dedicated to exploring our nation’s past from the perspective of those “who have been excluded from the canon.”

“CAMP” is a slippery term with an array of denotations ranging from generally humorous, corny, or sentimental to specifically effeminate or gay. Moe Meyer argues that the only genuine “Camp” (with a big C) is exclusively a gay phenomenon …

COMING OUT and coming-of-age are certainly well-worn themes in gay literature, so it’s refreshing to see a young writer like Ryan Van Meter taking them in different directions. … If You Knew Then What I Know Now, a collection of fourteen interlocking and inventive personal essays, is the Missouri-born author’s first book, yet his writing shows a polish and finely tuned attention to the inner dynamics of family and gay experience that’s rare for a debut volume.

“THOUGH THERE ARE some disagreeable things in Venice,” Henry James once wrote, “there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.” In the rank and twisted world of The Venetian Boy, however, author Michael Willhoite populates this coming-of-age novel set in the 1970’s entirely with unsavory characters, both visitors to the City of Canals and residents alike.