Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America

The definitive account of the gay rights movement, Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney's Out for Good is comprehensive, authoritative, and excellently written.

This is the definitive account of the last great struggle for equal rights in the twentieth century. From the birth of the modern gay rights movement in 1969, at the Stonewall riots in New York, through 1988, when the gay rights movement was eclipsed by the more urgent demands of AIDS activists, this is the remarkable and—until now—untold story of how a largely invisible population of men and women banded together to create their place in America’s culture and government. Told through the voices of gay activists and their opponents, filled with dozens of colorful characters, Out for Good traces the emergence of gay rights movements in cities across the country and their transformation into a national force that changed the face of America forever.

Out for Good is the unforgettable chronicle of an important—and nearly lost—chapter in American history.

Dudley Clendinen (1944–2012) wrote for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and many other publications. He was the editor of a book of essays, The Prevailing South; author of A Place Called Canterbury; and author of the text of a book of photographs, Homeless in America.

Adam Nagourney has been a reporter for The New York Times since 1996. He served as the newspaper’s chief political correspondent from 2002 to 2010, and is currently the chief of its Los Angeles Bureau. He lives in Los Angeles.