Gay Essentials: Facts for Your Queer Brain

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Who was Sappho?
How gay was the Renaissance?
When were the first sodomy laws passed in America?
Were there any gay heroes in the American Revolution?
Were "passing" women lesbians?
Who was Walt Whitman?
Who was Karl Heinrich Ulrichs?
How did San Francisco become so gay?
Was Susan B. Anthony a lesbian?
Who were the "berdaches"?
Who was Katharine Lee Bates?
What was the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee?
What were Oscar Wilde's trials about?
What is the history of gay bathhouses?
When did American gays, lesbians, and others first start calling themselves "queer"?
Who was E.M. Forster?
Who were Havelock Ellis and Edith Lees Ellis?
How gay was the Harlem Renaissance?
Who were Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas?
Who was Willa Cather?
What was the Leopold and Loeb case?
Who was Natalie Barney?
What was the first gay rights organization in America?
Who was Janet Flanner?
What was the "Padlock" Bill?
What was The Well of Loneliness?
Who was Babe Didrikson Zaharias?
Was Eleanor Roosevelt a lesbian?
What was The Children's Hour?
What happened to gays and lesbians during the Holocaust?
Who were some of the lesbians in Hollywood's golden age?
What is the origin of the phrase "a friend of Dorothy's"?
Who were Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead?
What were the army drag shows during World War II?
What were "blue discharges"?
When did the American gay and lesbian press begin?
How gay were Tennessee Williams's plays?
What was the Kinsey Report?
What were the lesbian pulp novels of the 1950s?
What were physique magazines?
Who was Christine Jorgensen?
What was the Mattachine Society?
How did McCarthyism affect gays and lesbians?
Who were the Daughters of Bilitis?
Who was Rudi Gernreich?
Who was James Baldwin?
What was the Boise Sex Scandal?
What was Evelyn Hooker's research about?
What was the Wolfenden Report?
Who was Lorraine Hansberry?
What was the Supreme Court's first pro-gay ruling?
What have gays and lesbians experienced in revolutionary Cuba?
Who was Bayard Rustin?
What was NACHO?
What is the origin of the annual gay and les

Who was Sappho? How did San Francisco get so gay? Was Eleanor Roosevelt really a lesbian? In this lively volume, Bianco (History for Everyone) answers these and 98 other questions about gay history. Largely culled from Bianco's newspaper column "Past Out," the entries in Gay Essentials are succinct, witty, and anecdotal. Bianco does a sensible, entertaining job of covering the kind of history that isn't taught in most schoolsAbut his work leaves one with the feeling that it could have been much more. Bianco reveals a strong, unnoted bias toward people and events in the United States, and some of the biographical details should probably be taken with a grain of salt. In the end, this book is more like the People's Almanac than a true reference work. It does, however, contain an excellent bibliography for those who seek more depth. Recommended for gay studies collections as well as large public libraries.ARichard Violette, Special Libs. Cataloging, Inc., Victoria, BC
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.