Fascinating though it is, this is not a book for the beach but is instead a scholarly tract that often reads like a dissertation.

RESEMBLING a memoir in its early pages, Hidden turns out to be about nothing less than a man’s search for God. As such, it belongs to a literary tradition that encompasses St. Augustine, Dante, and Thomas Merton. …

… Making the case for the deep intresections of mysticism and eros-and drawing heavily on Georges Bataille- [Brintnall] argues that the paradoxical symbol of the compromised male body as a symbol of redemption embodies the “self-shattering and fragmentation” that is erotic and mystical transcendence. Nimbly dancing between the Bible, Robert Mapplethorpe, the artist Francis Bacon, and Hollywood action films, Brintnall concludes that representations of suffering male bodies offer “a chance at glimpsing oneself in the other across the wound’s abyss, a headlong fall of dizzying ecstasy.” …

Communists and Perverts under the Palms: The Johns Committee in Florida, 1956-1965 by Stacy Braukman University Press of Florida. 250 pages, $69.95 IN 1956, the Florida legislature established…More

[The Times of Harvey Milk] helped to bring Milk closer to household-name status and undoubtedly smoothed the way for The Harvey Milk Interviews, an inviting collection of interviews with and speeches by Milk himself. …