Editorial Review

Reviews

Rescued from oblivion, September 1, 2010
I knew I was going to enjoy this biography from its first page. Spring writes, "I first came across Steward's name in the gay pulp fiction archive and database at the John Hay Special Collections Library at Brown University..." The gay pulp fiction archive?! Immediately readers know they're in for a ride.

Samuel Steward (aka Donald Bishop, Thomas Cave, John McAndrews, Phil Sparrow, Ward Stames, Phil Andros) was a poet, novelist, Catholic English professor, tattoo artist, gay pornographer, friend of Gertrude Stein and Alice Tolkas, and a key contributor to Alfred Kinsey's sex research. Justin Spring has rescued this astonishing character from oblivion, giving him the break he never got in what Steward described as "my happily wasted life."

This biography is definitely not for the gentle reader. Steward's prodigious sexual escapades from the 30s through the 80s made my few remaining hairs stand on end. Sailors, thugs, underage hustlers, Rudolph Valentino, Thorton Wilder, students, policemen, ex-cons, priests and one Hells Angel, scripted orgies, brutal S/M sessions: all were documented in his meticulous "Stud File." Almost despite himself, quiet little Steward was a defiant, transgressive artist to his core, surviving repression, literary rejection, AIDS, alcoholism and depression with a staggering sense of aplomb. One favorite example (that will only mean something to gay readers of a certain age): in his late 50s, Steward's favorite paid partner was "one very talented and extraordinarily good-looking hustler who later took the porn name of Johnny Hardin... Between late 1966 and 1970 Steward had sex with him 155 times." Now there is a fun fact to know and tell.

What Secret Historan means to me, October 13, 2010
Truth is indeed stranger (and a helluva lot more fun) than fiction! Had the life of this incredible man not been so thoroughly researched (a decade in the making) by the author, Justin Spring, and so meticulously documented by the subject himself, one would scarcely believe such a life could have existed.

Secret Historian, The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, intrigued and touched me on so many levels. Firstly, it's a real page-turner. I didn't want to put it down, as I could hardly wait to find out what Sam was going to get himself into next. And trust me, Sam never let me down!

Secondly, as a devotee of gay history, not since Donald Vining's detailed diary has a gay man's day to day life been documented in such vivid detail. Through Sam Steward's scandalous Stud File, his letters, his journal and other writings, Justin Spring's fascinating book shatters the myth that the pre-Stonewall gay life was all gloom and sexless doom.

This is not to say that Sam, being an isolator who eschewed emotional attachments with other men (and who battled alcohol and drug addictions), didn't have his share of loneliness and depression, especially in his later years when he felt he was no longer sexually viable. Indeed, with the iconoclastic life he designed for himself, a later life of addiction, isolation and sadness seemed inevitable. Fortunately, Sam's delightful sense of humor, very much in evidence in this book, sustained him through most of his darkest hours.

And therein lies the primary reason this book moved me so much. Except for Sam's fascination with S/M sex, I found such a great number of parallels between his life and my own, his thought processes and life choices, that the final chapters in this book served as a wake-up call; a realization that unless I made some serious lifestyle and career changes, that my own golden years would likely be filled with solitude and detachment as Sam's had.

My only regret is that, after being introduced to Sam Steward in this moving and entertaining biography, I was never able to meet the man in person. But thanks to the author's obvious affection for his subject, I feel as though I have.

I've never written a book review in my 50 years, And it's not often that a book can not only hold one's interest through two readings, but also serve as a catalyst to change one's life. But Secret Historian has done just that.

And Dear Justin Spring: I had to make sure that you knew.

An extraordinary work, August 24, 2010
Spring,an exceptional biographer, has taken a look at a relatively unknown life, and through its exploration has revealed not only a life ardently lived, but one which illuminates the lives of so many others. I look forward to Spring's next work.

A real revelation, August 30, 2010
Who knew? Thanks to Justin Spring we have a whole new real-life character from the 20th century. This is an excellent book.

A Professor of Sex, October 20, 2010
Samuel Steward (aka Phil Sparrow, Phil Andros) lived (1909-1993) an interesting life. A boyhood that, if not necessarily unhappy, was not an easy one. He obtains a doctorate in English literature and then a series of untenured teaching jobs, mostly in Chicago and at Catholic institutions, for which, temperamentally, he was not well suited. Sam was homosexual and the years of his adulthood were, well, let us say, unpropitious for gays in America. On the other hand Steward never found it difficult, until he reached a certain age, to find sexual partners. He diligently compiled a card file detailing all the thousands of his sexual experiences (from Rudolf Valentino on), which Alfred Kinsey considered to be of enormous scientific interest and significance. (Steward was one of Kinsey's main homosexual sources for his study of male sexuality.) Sam loved Europe, especially France, and visited the country as often as his limited resources allowed. Hankering for a literary career, he boldly introduced himself to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, who become life-long friends. (Steward published late in life the letters they wrote him, under the title "Dear Sammy.") He met Gide and Cocteau and became Thorton Wilder's lover, apparently Wilder's longest lasting relationship. Then Steward becomes interested in tattooing (he always was attracted to sailors) and opened a tattoo parlor in Chicago while he was still teaching at De Paul University. There was some inconcinnity between Steward's two professions and eventually, when his external employment was discovered by university authorities, Steward was terminated, although he informed his students (he was quite a popular teacher) that he had quit. Life becoming less endurable in Chicago, Steward moved to Oakland, CA, opened a tattoo shop there and soon became the favorite artist of the local branch of the Hell's Angels. His literary career only took off when he began publishing gay pornography, of a higher literary standard than is usual, under the nom de plume of Phil Andros. Steward never made much money at it (porn publishers didn't then pay well), but Sam found the labor fulfilling. Late in life, his health declined and he still lived in a very rough neighborhood. Thankfully, a few friends were there to take care of him until the end.
"Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade" by Justin Spring, is a reasonably well written and lively book. (With a subject like Steward, how could it not be?) I'm not fond of the "sexual renegade" bit; I suppose it's there for hype. But otherwise, this is a book I would strongly recommend both because Steward is interesting and because the book sheds much light on what it was like to be homosexual in America before Stonewall.

Required reading, October 20, 2010
This book should be required for all gay men. At different times in this compelling bio, Steward's life story will remind you of just about every gay man you know. Just when you think his life story can't get more interesting, it does. Just be careful that someone doesn't read it over your shoulder on mass transit. This book, like Steward, goes from discreet to graphic in an instant.

A great read!, September 3, 2010
The great achievement of this book is that it's so meticulously researched but also a wonderful read. A truly engaging account of a fascinating, singular life.

--Craig Seymour, author of All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C.

TOTALLY FASCINATIN READ!, October 24, 2010

My overall impression of Sam Steward's life was one of empathy & identification. Although he possessed much more education & opportunity than I, much of his own accord; his basic feelings toward life & his sexual orientation/activity is what I could most closely associate with. I really came to care very much for Sam Steward; someone I had never known of even heard of until I read this book's review in The New York Times.
THANK YOU Justin Spring for pursuing this work into publication; I am most heartily grateful to you.

What a life, September 27, 2010
I own and have read and reread Steward's own book, "Bad boys and Tough tattoos... it is a facinating document on tattooing in it's time, which is my primary interest.He makes no secret about being gay in that book, but it is barely mentioned. In this book, it is the primary focus. There is a good amount of information on his tattooing career, really fleshing out a lot of material missing in the first book. Again, really facinating stuff if you are a tattoo artist or enthusiast.
However, if you are the least bit squeamish about the seamy side of gay life, this book is not for you! As an outsider,I found it quite interesting considering the great respect I have for Mr. Steward... with an occasional EWWWWW, Ha! Seriously, it's a really great book if you are the least bit interested in either world, because Steward was a truely facinating character on SO many different levels. Definitely a worthy addition to my library.

Sam Steward - Secret No More, October 5, 2010
I really enjoyed this thoroughly researched and very readable book on Sam Steward.

I'm of an age where I remember reading Phil Andros pulps, borrowed from older friends (loved those Tom of Finland covers!), and vaguely remember Sam's articles in the Advocate, back when it was a magazine that mattered. (I've also seen and laughed at/with the "Phil Andros Sisters", a colourful sub-set of the Seattle Men's Chorus.)

Steward's life was, honestly, quite sordid but, oh my God, did he ever leave a legacy. With his connections to Stein, Toklas, Genet, et al, (and even to Oscar through Bosie Douglas) he really was a bridge or conduit to my generation - the ones who came out in (and survived) the 70s and early 80s.

Justin Spring is a truly dogged researcher, dealing with recalcitrant librarians/archivists, family members and so on. Just finding Sam's effects was a major coup in itself. He deserves great praise for connecting the dots to bring Sam back, warts and all. Steward really was a textbook example of "an exercise in contrasts". He deserved so much more than he ever got, and now Mr. Spring has thrown some kind light his way. ... Read more

Editorial Review

An entirely new interpretation of modern American portraiture based on the history of sexual difference.

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, companion volume to an exhibition of the same name at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, traces the defining presence of same-sex desire in American portraiture through a seductive selection of more than 140 full-color illustrations, drawings, and portraits from leading American artists. Arcing from the turn of the twentieth century, through the emergence of the modern gay liberation movement in 1969, the tragedies of the AIDS epidemic, and to the present, Hide/Seek openly considers what has long been suppressed or tacitly ignored, even by the most progressive sectors of our society: the influence of gay and lesbian artists in creating American modernism.

Hide/Seek shows how questions of gender and sexual identity dramatically shaped the artistic practices of influential American artists such as Thomas Eakins, Romaine Brooks, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Demuth, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Andrew Wyeth, Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, and many more—in addition to artists of more recent works such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Glenn Ligon, Catherine Opie, and Cass Bird. The authors argue that despite the late-nineteenth-century definition and legal codification of the “homosexual,” in reality, questions of sexuality always remained fluid and continually redefined by artists concerned with the act of portrayal. In particular, gay and lesbian artists—of but not fully in the society they portrayed—occupied a position of influential marginality, from which vantage point they crafted innovative and revolutionary ways of painting portraits. Their resistance to society's attempt to proscribe them forced them to develop new visual vocabularies by which to code, disguise, and thereby express their subjects' identities—and also their own.

Bringing together for the first time new scholarship in the history of American sexuality and new research in American portraiture, Hide/Seek charts the heretofore hidden impact of gay and lesbian artists on American art and portraiture and creates the basis for the necessary reassessment of the careers of major American artists—both gay and straight—as well as of portraiture itself.

Reviews

A Timely Exhibition, Tainted by Continuing Censorship, December 19, 2010
When the Smithsonian Institution had the courage this year to place in the National Portrait Gallery this exhibition HIDE/SEEK: DIFFERENCE AND DESIRE IN AMERICAN PORTRAITURE the art world applauded. The exhibition aimed to describe how gender and identity could be traced far back in the country's history of creating American portraiture and in doing so break some barriers of controversy that have dissipated with the passage of time. The exhibition was conceived and well-mounted by Jonathan D. Katz and David C. Ward with the idea of combining a timeline of art history within the framework of the same-sex desire from the 'Victorian' era of the turn of the century through the changes accompanying the feminist movement, Stonewall and subsequent gay liberation through the AIDS plague (and the country's response) to the present. Given the fact that Congress has now finally repealed the 'don't ask, don't tell' military restriction it would seem this exhibition is thoughtfully timely. Sadly the spectre of censorship - removing David Wojnarowicz's video "A Fire in My Belly" that momentarily shoed ants crawling over the belly of an inexpensive Mexican crucifix - has diminished the statement of courage made by one of our most important national museums, numbing the impact of the importance of this extraordinary collection of American portrait art.

Thanks to the publication of this rather impressive catalogue for the exhibition, the ideas within the exhibition are now preserved for history. The greeting work as the doors open in the National Portrait Gallery is the beautiful 'Salutat' by Thomas Eakins, a large painting of a near nude male saluting his appreciative all male audience - one of the many works where Eakins depicted his same sex stance in a society that condemned such of his paintings as his famous 'Swimming'. Other artists with like inclinations are included - Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, Romaine Brooks, George Bellows, Winslow Homer, Grant Wood, F. Holland Day, JC Leyendecker, John Singer Sargent, Georgia O'Keefe, Paul Cadmus, Jasper Johns , Robert Rauschenberg, Andrew Wyeth, Andy Warhol, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Catherine Opie, Robert Mapplethorpe, Larry Rivers, Cy Twombly, Frank O'Hara, Agnes Martin, Ellsworth Kelly, Lucas Samaras, Lyle Ashton Harris, Jerome Caja, Alice Neel, David Hockney, Anthony Goicolea, Annie Leibovitz, and many others, including, of course, David Wojnarowicz!

The well researched and well written essays by Katz and Ward relate by word and accompanying images that the artists from the early part of the 20th century treated questions of sexuality as 'fluid, hiding reality behind the demands of society at that time...occupying a safe state of marginality. Their resistance to society's attempt to proscribe them forced them to develop new visual vocabularies by which to code, disguise, and thereby express their subjects' identities--and also their own.'
As the exhibition continues to the present there are many very important works that demonstrate the courage of the creators in a society that is beginning to cope with differences in gender identity. This is an historically important exhibition and the accompanying catalogue is a substantial addition to both art history and gender studies. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, December 10 ... Read more

Editorial Review

The author turns his attention to sex and the reasons why we are driven constantly to analyze and discuss it. An iconoclastic explanation of modern sexual history. ... Read more

Reviews

Misinterpretation by Reviewers, October 11, 2003
This text is perhaps Foucault's most well-known, although it might not be his best. It is an important work, so if you are at all interested in sex as an abstract and organizing principle, this is a must-read. (Note: it is not a history in the proper sense of the term). While not a terribly confusing book, it is WIDELY misunderstood, including by many of the reviewers. First off, do not make the mistake of reading the first section as Foucault's thesis (it may seem that way)--he is presenting the common approach to the issue, one that he will eventually CHALLENGE. "Sex" was never repressed--on the contrary, there has been an explosion of discourses, a productive manifestation of power. Foucault admits that this was partially organized through technologies of confession, normalization, etc.-BUT THAT IS NOT THE MAIN THRUST. The main idea of the text is that there is no commanding, Platonic principle "sex" that we must uncover or saturate ourselves with, and hence, while prudery seems suspect, liberation through "sex" or "sex-desire" is entirely nonsensical, since sex is subordinate to sexuality and not vica-versa. Foucault, with much uncertainty, thereby envisions a different economy of bodies and pleasures, more like the ars erotica, that focuses on the local and individual, with all their multiple possibilities for deeper value and communication. Hence, depite what people make of Foucault's life, this book is more "conservative" that one would imagine... It is ideal for anyone who wants to free themselves from either a deep-rooted fear of sex or the incessant demands sex makes from on high (from the media, etc.) To Foucault, the idea that sex is seen as a requirement for one's deepest sense of being is absurd (and almost comical). A fascinating exploration which you might have to read twice, the History of Sexuality demonstrates Foucault's otherwordly insight. Do not fall into the traps I mentioned--Foucault's purpose here is not to free sex from all controls, but merely from one in particular--the reader is given the freedom to reflect and counter it with a more positive and meaningful grasp of his own sexuality and sexual experience.

One of the most important books of our time, November 1, 1999
Foucault's three-part History of Sexuality begins here with an examination of the ways in which our contemporary interpretation of sexuality has been shaped by historical trends. Foucault makes a compelling case for the construction of sexual identity as a function of political and economic forces. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in sexuality, psychoanalysis, gender studies, queer theory, or feminisms, or indeed anyone who wishes to confront his or her own personal assumptions about gender and sexuality. Think you know what normal is? After Foucault, you may not be so sure. (One more thing: while this book is a fascinating read which can stand alone, I strongly advise anyone interested in this subject to go on to read the second and third volumes)

Foucault at work..., January 10, 2004
This book can be seen as a perfect example of a brilliant mind at work. Foucault surely considered this book as an introductory piece, a draft of brilliantly posed ideas and problems about sexuality as a dispositive, not in the traditional sense of the word that we have all become so acquainted with. This book works in many respects: Foucault succesfully makes his case for an open refusal of the "repressive hypothesis", explaining in a very precise manner why the discourse on sexuality in the XVIII and XIX centuries, far from being shy about it, positively promoted discussion... what he calls a "discoursive explosion". Foucault quite brilliantly introduces the two ways in which sexuality has come to be assumed by the human race: as an art (in ancient Greece) and as a science (in our present era). He also develops his own ideas (ideas that also appear in his courses at the Coll�ge de France, particularly "Society Must Be Defended") about bio-power, disciplinary societies and biopolitical regimes. He successfully questions the fact that we have come to place sex under a veil of secrecy which must be undone... how sex has become the key to our personality, our "identity".

The last verses of the book are revealing: how is it that we still consider sex to be liberating when in reality we are always under its gaze, when it really has become a burden to be dealt with?

This book is astounding. Maybe not as brilliant as "Discipline and Punish" (which says a LOT about Foucault's creative nature)but certainly a key text toward understanding the problems Foucault tackled in final years of his life.

Note: the last two volumes of the History of Sexuality display a shift of focus and a leap back in "history"... you'll have to read the introduction to volume 2, "The Use Of Pleasure", to see what I mean. Still, it all makes sense if you dig deeper into the final developments of Foucault's work.

Foucault - the smart kid who doesn't do homework, February 20, 2009
More like a 3.5 if that was an option. Part of me hates rating this book so low, but I really have to. Here's why.

I love and hate Foucault more than just about any other philosopher. He is probably the pre-eminent French philosopher of his generation. The problem is that he is probably also the worst French historian of all time.

Foucault certainly has his moments and he's consistently entertaining (he's a very good writer and judging from his lectures, a great lecturer), but underneath it all, he's fundamentally lazy - he never does research studies or clinical work, he never looks outside France, he uses translations and secondary sources when he should be using original texts, he cites literature as if it is representative of the masses in the society in which it was written. Yet his writing is so confident, and his ideas so interesting and self-assured people believe him without checking his sources or his historical assertions.

He reminds me of the student I always have in my class who comes up with the best ideas but is unwilling to follow them through. The B student that should be an A+ student. He doesn't do homework, he doesn't show his work. I have to give them split grades. I'd give Foucault a split grade if I could - Ideas 5/5. Reasoning and Research 2/5.

In Foucault's case, he didn't do research outside France, he didn't reference or respond to contemporary History of Ideas works on Sexuality (e.g. Otto Kiefer's Sexuality in Rome and Greece, Van Gulick's Sexuality in Ancient China), he failed to develop a basic understanding of medicine, he cherrypicked texts that suited his arguments and failed to consider opposing arguments, and his Greek and Latin leave something to be desired.

His concept of the "repressive hypothesis" in this book is extremely interesting and well-reasoned (apart from the historical examples). His notion of biopower is also fairly intriguing, though not fleshed out in sufficient detail here (Psychiatric Power has more on it), and seems to be a kind of extension of the Hegelian for-itself (which is conceived in terms of relationships). He also very briefly, mentions third sex/intersexed individuals, which became a jumping off point for a lot of queer theory. Buyer beware - if you're looking for queer theory, it's only about a page or two, so you'll probably be disappointed.

Here's the real problem with this book - the examples, the historical scholarship. Foucault, determined as he is to prove (like Nietzsche did quite a bit more convinvingly in Beyond Good and Evil) the lack of foundation of contemporary morality bends the truth and fails to see things that are very obvious to medical professionals and more objective historians.

Case in point:

In a passage (31) and elsewhere in references to Ancient Greece, Foucault more or less writes an apologia for pedophilia. There is a problem though with all this - the unstated biological injunction. As someone who was an EMT - I can tell you something that should be obvious to someone as smart as Foucault, but wasn't - apart from normative moral concerns (which wouldn't concern an anti-foundationalist) - sexual intercourse with children physically and biologically injures them. I won't go into the gory details. If they're young enough, it could kill them. There's also the way young people respond to STD's. Sometimes, that's different, too.

Even if you completely dispense with normative morality and enact purely utilitarian laws based upon simply minimizing biological damage or instead engage in a minarchical system with protective services, this would still be largely prohibited either by law or contracted mutual assent.

In addition, Foucault does not understand biology very well and often uses outdated medical references like Pinel to represent current medical practice. The thing is Foucault is clever about it. It's a straw man, but it's a clever straw man, because he cites Pinel in a historical context and later as a means of (falsely) explaining the contemporary. Either that, or he just doesn't get medicine all that well.

Then there's Christianity. Oh, God, is Foucault ever wrong on this frontier. He even claims (117) the first treatise on sin was written in the 15th century. Off the top of my head, there are writings on sin as early as Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century (and perhaps earlier). You're ten centuries off, Foucault! That kind of oversight borders on ridiculous. How no one else has picked up on that baffles me.

I'd definitely read this book, but read it critically. It's not as inept in the scholastic sense as Madness and Civilization (which famously contains references to the non-existent Ship of Fools) but some of the scholarship is abysmal.

The French/Greco-Roman focus is a tad trying too, especially considering the wealth of available laws of quite a number of other major civilizations, which Foucault overlooks, presumably because they have male to male sodomy prohibitions which problematize his central arguments, or because of his obvious ignorance of other languages.

If this sounds overly negative, bear in mind - I like this book, and wholeheartedly recommend purchasing it. Just take it with a grain of salt. It has some extraordinarily interesting ideas, but alas, when I see it, I see what could have been if the author was more disciplined in his approach. If there wasn't so much there that was good, I wouldn't be nearly as upset by Foucault's sloppy scholarship.

the titillating game, October 17, 2001
In "The History of Sexuality", Foucault enlightens us with sexuality as a tribute benefiting from knowledge and power. Sexuality before the 18th century, was in a sense, located in the body and the flesh. There was no established fetish. Sex had not come under the scrutiny of science (psychoanalysis). Sex was just sex; for procreation and physical enjoyment. When the confessionals started to become a ritual in religion we see a shift or rupture in history. Priests in the middle ages became concerned with what people did sexually. It was the confession that would free, but it was the power that reduced an individual to silence. Thus the titillating game began and repeated and repeated. Freud and his psychoanalysis came along, which defined and categorized sexuality and its dysfunctions. Psychoanalysis became a scientific confessional. Thus society has become a singularly confessing society; Western man has become a confessing animal. Foucault then begins to posit anchorage points in institutions such as in the home; anchorage points which standardizes roles of family classification. It's roughly 160 pages long and readable. This was probably my favorite of Foucault's work.

Hard...but worth it., June 20, 2006
Foucault is one of the most important thinkers of our time. He is a historian, a cultural theorist, and a philosopher. When looking at the History of Sexuality Foucault does not see powerful figures repressing sex, but actually encouraging people to discuss it. This discourse was encouraged so that sex could be controlled and this discourse actually created what is today called sexuality--a norm that we believe to be culturally independent or universal. The belief that sex is repressed is only another strategy formed through a series of power relationships that desires for people to keep discussing sex in order that this "sex" can be classified and controled. For example: Encouraging a discourse on the act of sodomy enabled a catagory of homosexual to be created. Instead of sodomy being a act that a person may engage in, that person instantly became a homosexual, his sexuality constituting his entire being--how he/she should talk, act, and live in general. The discourse that was encourage to develop around sex enable power to classify and control sexuality--power actually created what we believe to be the "real sexuality". Foucault explains the complicated relationship between power and discourse that developed a set of complicated and sometimes contradicting--and always changing--ideas about what sex is and how we are to approach it.
This book is not easy. I will have to read it again. However, I believe that this book is a good intro to Foucault's very important theories on power relationships. An important factor to be recognized is that this book is a translation from french and, as many people have already expressed, has made it more difficult to comprehend. I did not understand everything in totality but I feel that the most imporant concepts were revealed. If you get confused take a deep breath and reread the previous paragraph, doing this helped alot and gives your brain a second chance to wrap itself around the really difficult parts. This is a very rewarding book that will give you valuable tools for confronting and interpreting the ideologies and power relationships we are confronted with. Good Luck!

You will never see the world or yourself the same way again, March 25, 2001
There is no doubt in my mind that Foucault is one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century and without a doubt among the most influential. His philosophical inquiry into material history of systems and their construction/perpetuation has revolutionized the way in which we see the world around us and has led to fruitful and fascinating inquiries in the field of cultural studies.

No volume articulates Foucault's ideas with greater clarity than this first volume of his history of sexuality. More a manifesto than a true history, Foucault outlines with astonishing deftness the ways in which our perceptions are molded by systems of knowledge and power. These systems, which he describes as "intentional but non-subjective" (in other words, having a purpose and goal, but not directed by any guiding intelligence) are like natural forces that shape and mold our understanding of the world while they perpetuate themselves. His analysis of the formulation of ideas of sexuality in the 18th and 19th centuries illustrates his argument both forcefully and clearly. Readers may, by the way, want to compare Foucault's ideas with Louis Althusser's in his essay on the Industrial State Apparatus in his collection "Lenin and Philosophy," which provides a similarly materialists, but more politically Marxist, view of how subjectivity is constructed and limited by existing modes of power.

Influential and important work, absolutely dreadful translation, April 15, 2006
I would concur with the Marquis point regarding the quality of the translation, which is obfuscating at best, and downright misleading at its worst. For those with the French, go with the original text (French title "La Volente de Savoir"). But I thought it worth mentioning that there does apparently exist an alternative translation of the work by a Robert Hurley, which has been published rather recently under the title "The History of Sexuality: the Will to Knowledge" (ISBN: 0140268685). Unfortunately I haven't had an opportunity to check out the new translation, though I would love to know whether it's any better.

Incidentally, one aspect of this work which appears to have been only eluded to by other authors, is that as the introductory volume of what was intended to be a more far reaching study, there is a significant portion of the work relevant for those interested in Foucault's (contra Dmitry) genealogical method, which made quite a splash in contemporary political theory, as well as the exposition of Foucault's rather novel theory of power. Unfortunately much is left out, and I would therefore suggest inquisitive readers to acquire the collection of Foucault's essays published under the English title "Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984" which contains many texts particularly relevant to this work.

Review, September 1, 2003
This is part one in Foucault's three part series on Sexuality. It doesn't have the gripping opening few pages that Discipline and Punish has (quite possibly the most engrossing beginning of any book I have ever read), but it still grabs you. What this volume does have is amazing clarity in the ideas that he presents. The general idea is that society controls sex through how it talks about it and organizes it (this is pretty much the idea in all of Foucault's works) and Foucault examines this power structure of society. How marriage controls sexuality, why there has been such a veritable explosion of discussion about sex in the West since the seventeenth century, why do we believe that talking about sex will make us less repressed about it, etc. Foucault addresses many questions in this work.
I did have some problems with it, however. I'll only mention one or two here. In the closing chapter of the book Foucault discusses the Right of Death and Power over Life. He begins by talking about the Right of the Sovereign to compel to war (Foucault is very anti-War) and how it has changed from wars being waged to protect a sovereign to wars being waged to protect people and ideals and an entire nation. We have this line: "In any case, in its modern form - relative and limited - as in its ancient and absolute form, the right of life and death is a dissymmetrical one. The sovereign exercised his right of life only by exercising his right to kill, or by refraining from killing; he evidenced his power over life only through the death he was capable of requiring (emphasis added). I'm not sure I agree with this statement. Nor am I convinced that history does - and Foucault offers neither text nor argument to support this. He expects us to take it as fact. Gone are theories of divine right and other power structures invoked by sovereign's (taxes, services, "For England", or "For France"). Patriotism isn't only a modern day invention. Joan of Arc drove the English out of France so that France could be it's own nation again. "Power in this instance was essentially right of seizure: of things, time, bodies, and ultimately life itself; it culminated in the privilege to seize hold of life in order to suppress it." The implication is that "Power" has changed (and it has) so that now society (through it's mechanism of discussion and examination) has power even when the "right of seizure" isn't enforceable - or doesn't exist. These themes tend to come out over the course of reading several of Foucault's books, but never does M. Foucault state them so precisely and with such clarity as he does in this volume.

Important Author, Terrible Translation, October 17, 2005
While Foucault is a must-read in nearly all social science fields, this book should be read in conjunction with several other articles and books by Foucault--most notably, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History", "Schizo-Culture", and 'Discipline and Punish'. There are far too many misconceptions regarding Foucault's thought, which is inescapable given the scope of this book and the sophistication of langauge used. I would also recommend having a basic understanding of Freud's theories on sexuality and the Critical school of thought.

The largest problem I have with this book is that it is a terrible translation of the original French work. This is clear even to me, just from a basic reading knowledge of French. If you do read French, you can buy a copy from Amazon. Otherwise, read several of his articles and books in addition to this one--I do not know of any other English translations of this book. ... Read more

Editorial Review

When it comes to pleasure, size doesn't matter; as we all know it s quality, not quantity, that counts. But let's admit it: a big penis is undeniably compelling. Big shoulders, big lapels, and big hair may come and go, but the big penis never goes out of fashion. With those possessing more than 8 inches (20 cm) making up less than 2% of the world's population, this rare accessory will always fascinate.

In The Big Penis Book we explore the centuries-old fascination with the large phallus, a fascination common to men and women alike. This hefty book is profusely illustrated with over 400 historic photos of spectacular male endowments, including rare photos of the legendary John Holmes. The majority of the photographs are from the 1970s, when the sexual revolution first freed photographers to depict the male entirely nude. Photographers include Bob Mizer of Athletic Model Guild, David Hurles of Old Reliable, Colt, Falcon, Sierra Domino, Third World, and Champion Studios, with each of these iconic photographers interviewed or profiled, along with information about each of their models. And if this isn t enough, the book closes with a special surprise comparable to the Guinness Book of Records Norma Stitz featured in The Big Book of Breasts! Can you guess what body part Dian is dissecting next? ... Read more

Reviews

Overpriced but amusing, July 28, 2008
As a gay man, yes, I have a penis fascination. And having come of age in the 70s-80s, I'm familiar with the studios that provided most of these pictures. But after having my porn-nostalgia moment and looking and page-after-page of phalluses - most attached to unattractive men - I came to find this book more funny than erotic. The poses and the photographic settings of these pictures are really quaint by today's standards, or just downright scary and creepy, if you think about it. It's an amusing archive of gay porn from the 30s to the 80s.

The book itself is way overpriced for what it is. The editorial content is superfluous, and sometimes inaccurate. And the mylar cover was damaged in shipping as well. Wait for this book to go on discount.

Big Book, Big Penises, Big Fun, January 4, 2009
You don't have to worry about what the adjective modifies in the title of the book _The Big Penis Book_ (Taschen). The book is big. It is twelve inches square, and weighs over seven pounds, with almost four hundred heavy, glossy pages. It is just the sort of book that can go on your coffee table, if you have such a table to support it, and if you like penises. Big penises. For the penises are big, too. Page after page here, hundreds of photographs, show men who, relaxed or erect, have penises ranging from remarkably large, to gargantuan, to (literally) fantastically huge. Dian Hanson, who previously brought out the less-ambiguously-titled but still similarly-themed _The Big Book of Breasts_, has edited what is mostly a book of photographs, with text that is generally reminiscences of photographers who were shooting models during the 1960- 1990 period, pictures that would go into small distribution magazines or private collections. The pictures, however, are the show, and they are a treat to look at.

As Hanson points out in her introduction, there is no denying the allure of a large penis. "Flaccid or erect, it is aesthetically stunning - commanding every onlooker to consider capacity and consequence." She points out how evolution has formed penises to be big in our species but also to be the objects of our candid regard. So how big is a big penis? The "most prolific penis measurer in history" was probably Professor Alfred Kinsey, who collected statistics from 3,500 men by giving them a blank card they were supposed to put along the top of their erections, mark, and send in. Kinsey didn't find anyone with a penis longer than nine inches, but there are plenty bigger on display here. The interviews are with the photographers rather than the models because many of the models aren't around any more, dead like John Holmes from AIDS, or running businesses or heading families that preclude participating in or reminiscing about their photogenic days. The photographers themselves have moved on, to advertising shots, art production, or launching a quarterly magazine on ancient Egypt. They talk about their models from long ago with fondness (some were lovers); one says, "I'm a frustrated father and I take an interest in a number of these young men - not because I fancy them, but because they've had nightmare childhoods." Some of the photographers remember the models complaining about having too much of a good thing, yearning for penis-reduction surgery because either they attracted only lovers who just wanted a big penis, or because a big penis restricted some of the activities that normal penises routinely enjoy. This is a good message for those of us who know they'll never measure up to the examples in the photos here, or will never have a lover of these dimensions. Hanson writes that fretting over size is silly: "Why should we invest all this anxiety in a couple of inches when we can simply sit back, pop a beer, and let the big boys entertain us like a good game of baseball?"

The photographs are certainly entertaining. There are bound to be those who like to see the possessor of a large penis wearing boots and a leather cap and belt; others are going to find the props pretty silly. Why does this one have a cowboy hat and cap pistol, for instance, and why does this other one think it is time to serenade us on his guitar? One of them gives an emphatic answer to the old question of what a Scotsman has under his kilt. The guys are handsome (often in styles that are already dated), usually with good physiques, and many of the photographs have been fussed over as would befit any studio production. The men who smile at the camera, as if they were playing a happy prank or as if they were sincerely enjoying themselves, look endearing (but maybe that's just my kink). The penises are not just big; flaccid they might do anything, but in erection they are straight, curved, even bent; they are circumcised or not; some look smooth and others look textured; some have a big glans, some small. The differences are remarkable, and probably all the more noticeable because we don't often look at lots of penises the way this book enables us to do. And while they are not just big, they are indeed big, and because they are big, they are cheerful and optimistic. This is a book of fun.

Wow!, July 12, 2008
Oh dear. I am a 70 year old woman and I just happened across this big penis book in my son's room. My son is 45 years old and still single. I think he might be gay. That said, his big penis book is now in my room under my bed. So now my 45 year old single son is probably gay and angry. Well, he should get a job anyway or at least go find some real penis and stop reading about them in books like this. Good Lord this is a big penis book. And I love a big penis. And so does my son, apparently. I give this book ten thumbs up. I can't believe I never knew he was gay. He should get a job. Maybe as a dancer. Anyway, if you like a big penis, you will like this big penis book. Lord there are big penis's in this book. I mean big. Oh dear.

Great Book....with an issue, July 4, 2008
I think this is a very cool book celebrating the endowments of male stars of the 60's and 70's ( Everything from Bob Mizer's Athletic Models Guild to COLT to Falcon to Old Reliable). But be warned, I received two copies that both suffered from the same badly wrinkled/melted dustjacket. It was very disappointing,

Big may be an understatement!, June 28, 2008
To my surprise, this hefty volume featuring wonderful male anatomy arrived at my doorstep today. I can't complain much because, well... this book is big... and full of many, many photos, intriguing stories, and glimpses into the photographers and model's lives.

I have only two nit-picky complaints to this highly anticipated release. One, being (upon arrival) the clear dust jacket featuring undies, which keeps the book somewhat less provocative came warped, wrinkled, and virtually unpresentable. This is less than what I come to expect from Tashen books. I'm willing to overlook this factor because this may simply be an isolated case.

The other thing is, many of the photographs in The Big Penis Book seemed somewhat repetitive... same pose, different model. Again, just a little quirk I noticed. Despite that, this hardcover remains a wonderful addition to your collection to flaunt to guests. Great for those ice breaker moments!

In so many words, I recommend this book to everyone who can appreciate erotic photography as an art form - and of course - those fascinated with the male member.

Old Pictures, October 9, 2009
I thought this book would be more current, but I was disappointed to learn that the images included in this less than comprehensive collection of cock, are all from the 70s and 80s mostly. I think there was one decent looking guy in the whole book. Not that this book is marketed as a collection of attractive men, but it is an artistic disaster, because it is an expensive display of old porn, porn that is very dated, and distasteful. The approach the editor took when tackling this project seems incomplete. I would have enjoyed it more if there were also pictures of men from this century; maybe then, we could have seen some sort of logical progression from the early days of gay erotic photography.

easy reading, January 8, 2010
Its everything i hoped for and more. Coincadentally (sorry for the spelling), the book is as big as the men in it. its such a conversation piece or gag gift for that certain someone.

A must have for gay males, November 3, 2008
This book is a must have for gay males. put it on your coffee table as the perfect conversation piece. The book is expertly researched, the pictures are phenomenal, and the text is an interesting read.(if you can even read it for the photographs)

Lovely Penises, April 27, 2009
I bought this book for a female friend, and I loved it so much that I bought one for myself. At first, this book was a joke gift, until I opened it. It was truly artistic. Women know that size does not matter; however, a big penis is fascinating. The photographs were beautiful!!!

Penis Book review, May 30, 2009
Another fantastic Taschen book! This is the best yet! LARGE and beautiful...a real conversation starter on my coffee table! Super affordable and extremely colorful! ... Read more

Editorial Review

He claimed to be “the plainest kind of fellow you can find. There isn’t a single thing I’ve done, or experienced,” said Grant Wood, “that’s been even the least bit exciting.”

Wood was one of America’s most famous regionalist painters; to love his work was the equivalent of loving America itself. In his time, he was an “almost mythical figure,” recognized most supremely for his hard-boiled farm scene, American Gothic, a painting that has come to reflect the essence of America’s traditional values—a simple, decent, homespun tribute to our lost agrarian age.

In this major new biography of America’s most acclaimed, and misunderstood, regionalist painter, Grant Wood is revealed to have been anything but plain, or simple . . .

R. Tripp Evans reveals the true complexity of the man and the image Wood so carefully constructed of himself. Grant Wood called himself a farmer-painter but farming held little interest for him. He appeared to be a self-taught painter with his scenes of farmlands, farm workers, and folklore but he was classically trained, a sophisticated artist who had studied the Old Masters and Flemish art as well as impressionism. He lived a bohemian life and painted in Paris and Munich in the 1920s, fleeing what H. L. Mencken referred to as “the booboisie” of small-town America.

We see Wood as an artist haunted and inspired by the images of childhood; by the complex relationship with his father (stern, pious, the “manliest of men”); with his sister and his beloved mother (Wood shared his studio and sleeping quarters with his mother until her death at seventy-seven; he was forty-four).

We see Wood’s homosexuality and how his studied masculinity was a ruse that shaped his work.

Here is Wood’s life and work explored more deeply and insightfully than ever before. Drawing on letters, the artist’s unfinished autobiography, his sister’s writings, and many never-before-seen documents, Evans’s book is a dimensional portrait of a deeply complicated artist who became a “National Symbol.” It is as well a portrait of the American art scene at a time when America’s Calvinistic spirit and provincialism saw Europe as decadent and artists were divided between red-blooded patriotic men and “hothouse aesthetes.”

Thomas Hart Benton said of Grant Wood: “When this new America looks back for landmarks to help gauge its forward footsteps, it will find a monument standing up in the midst of the wreckage . . . This monument will be made out of Grant Wood’s works.” ... Read more

Reviews

Grant Wood: the public and private, October 20, 2010
Most Americans know Grant Wood by only one painting...his famous "American Gothic", which is one of the most recognizable and parodied paintings in history. In this wonderful retrospective of the artist from Iowa, R. Tripp Evans has given the reader a warm, honest and comprehensive look at Wood's life...both public and private. It's an extraordinary offering.

Grant Wood was a rare artist in one sense...that his main output of known works occurred in one decade...the 1930s. This decade was known for its "regionalism" and featured the works of Wood, Thomas Hart Benton and John Stueart Curry...three men from the midwest who knew each other in varying levels of admiration and disapproval. A core of Evans's book centers around Wood's homosexuality which was hinted at for years but now has fully come to life in this book. Evans treats Wood with tremendous respect and proffers an understanding of the difficulties of living a closeted life during that time and how it affected his work and his relationships. The author is particularly good at weaving these people into Wood's personal life...his headstrong father, his closely attached mother and, especially after the artist's death, his legend-keeping sister.

The surprise to the reader, and to those who knew Wood at his time, was that Wood decided to get married and then endured a brief, rocky partnership. Yet, the fascination of this aspect of "Grant Wood: A Life" is his friendships with men. As best as one can assume, Wood was somewhat asexual, though his attractions (especially to younger men as a caregiver or provider) are nicely handled by the author.

Evans is a natural teacher and the inclusion of color plates of Wood's paintings make up the richest part of the book. It's like going to art class with the author as teacher. As a knowledgeable art historian, Evans takes us through many paintings in detail, explaining aspects that the lay person would easily miss. It's a terrific way to view Wood through his work.


I highly recommend "Grant Wood: A Life". It's a consummate and easily readable narrative presenting an overall view that Grant Wood loomed as an art giant of his age and though his paintings are "of an age", they are timeless.

From Gay City News (NYC), October 28, 2010
Grant Wood's "American Gothic" is the most recognizable American painting.

Of all the paintings in the world, only the Mona Lisa has been more parodied. As Tripp Evans notes in his groundbreaking new biography of the artist, when it was first exhibited in Chicago in 1930, it made an instant global celebrity out of Wood: "Never in the history of American art had a single work captured such immediate and international recognition; by the end of 1930, the painting had been reproduced in newspapers around the globe... Never before, either, had a painting generated such widespread curiosity about its artist."

"American Gothic" was considered by most critics of that day as something of a national self-portrait, and it made Wood the icon of a new native American, regionalist art. The New Yorker wrote at the time, "As a symbol Wood stands for the corn-fed Middle West against the anemic East, starving aesthetically upon warmed-over entrees dished up by Spanish chefs in Paris kitchens. He stands for an independent American art against the colonialism and cosmopolitanism of New York."

Wood, who was born in the small town of Anamosa, Iowa, in 1898 and spent nearly all his life painting in the Hawkeye State, depicting its countryside and inhabitants, was said to stand for the flinty, manly virtues of heartland America. The New York Times proclaimed that Wood, who styled himself a "farmer-painter," had earned his "toga virilis" for, as Evans summarizes it, "ending Americans' perilous fascination with impressionism."

Wood himself encouraged this anti-intellectual, quintessentially American, and rigorously heterosexual version of his persona and the origins of his art. He famously declared in a newspaper interview, "All the really good ideas I've ever had came to me while I was milking a cow," adding, "You don't get panicky about some `-ism' or other while you have Bossy by the business end. Your thoughts are realistic and direct."

The public image Wood constructed of himself even extended to the way he dressed. As one prominent critic eulogized him on his death in 1942, "In past years artists adopted smocks for their own... the working attire of French peasants. Grant Wood wore the work clothes of his own country when he painted, overalls such as a farmer or mechanic would choose."

But all of this was an elaborate charade. As Evans, an openly gay art history professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, reveals in this meticulously researched biography, Wood had made a careful study of impressionism during four extended trips to Europe and had been a student for two years at the prestigious Acad�mie Julian in Paris, where he steeped himself in the impressionist and post-impressionist masters.

Although he spent his earliest years on the family farm, he spent most of his boyhood time hidden away in a dark basement, his refuge where he could draw and paint, sequestered from the disapproval of his distant and authoritarian father, who considered such artistic proclivities "sissified."

His father died when he was quite young, and he then moved to the bustling metropolis of Cedar Rapids with his mother and sister, with whom he lived there for most of the rest of his life until, as part of his camouflage, he contracted a loveless, unconsummated, unhappy, and brief marriage.

Far from being inspired by milking cows -- an activity he only engaged in occasionally in his young boyhood -- Wood told his wife that he felt "disgusted and dirty" by the act. She would recount, "He told me how embarrassed he was at the time because he was sure that no matter how much he bathed, he must carry with him the smell of the manure which permeated his clothes from working around livestock."

And as a young man Wood wouldn't have been caught dead in overalls -- he was, in fact, something of a dandy, as photographs in this copiously illustrated volume from Wood's "bohemian," European period clearly show. His earliest vocations activities were not in farming but as a jewelry designer, interior decorator, and in theatrical production. One friend described the shy Wood's voice as sounding "like the fragrance of violets made audible."

Wood's previous biographers have turned a blind eye to the demonstrable fact that he was a deeply closeted homosexual. Evans documents the always-chubby Wood's infatuations (many of them apparently unrequited and sublimated into parental role-playing) with an unending series of slim, dark-haired young men who were his students, prot�g�s, and secretaries. As the bartender in a famous Cedar Rapids watering hole Wood favored put it, "Wood was only gay when he was drunk."

Evans has even unearthed numerous oblique but unmistakable references to Wood's sexual orientation in the Iowa newspapers of the 1920s. As he writes, "Given the later insistence upon Wood's sturdy masculinity and embodiment of Midwestern morality, it is surprising to note the frequency and candor of these early references to his homosexuality."

To take just one example, Wood's friend MacKinlay Kantor (who won later fame as a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and screenwriter) wrote in his gossip column for the Des Moines Tribune-Capital, emphasizing Wood's bachelorhood: "Pink of face and plump of figure, he was most nearly in character one night when he appeared at a costume party dressed as an angel -- wings, pink flannel nightie, pink toes, and even a halo, supported by a stick thrusting up his back."

Not only did Kantor link Wood's costume to common stereotypes of the "fairy," but after comparing Wood to Snow White, who lay imprisoned in a glass coffin awaiting her prince's kiss, Kantor wrote: "The front door of his apartment is made of glass, but it's a coffin lid. OOOOOOoooooh!" Kantor then exhorted the "boys" among his readers to "look [Wood] over." The meaning of all this is quite evident, unless one doesn't want to see.

The fact that things like this had appeared in print drove Wood even further into his closet in the late 1920s, leading him to adopt the overalls and "farmer-painter" pose to bolster its locked door. It was also at this time that he turned away from his early painting style, indisputably marked by his study of impressionists, to the gothic realism that, as Evans demonstrates, bore the imprint of the Dutch and German masters he had absorbed while studying in Germany.

Evans is brilliant in documenting how gender assignments were made to various artistic styles, and how impressionism was considered a "feminine" art form. Moreover, the new school of regionalist, "authentic" American art of "US scene" painting, of which Wood became a symbol in the 1930s after the stunning success of "American Gothic" -- and which was launched as a media fetish with a 1934 Time magazine cover story written on orders of its conservative nationalist publisher Henry Luce -- was impregnated with an explicitly xenophobic, anti-modernist, and extremely homophobic ideology.

Thus, Wood's famous comrade-in-arms in this movement, the painter Thomas Hart Benton, wrote a 1935 essay entitled "Farewell to New York," which Evans rightly describes as a "homophobic diatribe." In it, Benton roared that the city had "lost its masculinity" since the start of the Depression, because it had been polluted by "the concentrated flow of aesthetic-minded homosexuals into the various fields of artistic practice... far be it from me to raise any hands in moral horror over the ways and tastes of individuals. If young gentlemen, or old ones either, wish to wear women's underwear and cultivate extraordinary manners it is all right with me. But it is not all right with the art which they affect and cultivate. It is not all right when, by ingratiation or subtle connivance, precious fairies get into positions of power and judge, buy, and exhibit American pictures on a base of nervous whim and under the sway of those overdelicate refinements of taste characteristic of their kind." To cover himself, Wood endorsed Benton's queer-bashing declaration.

The movement's most ardent advocate among art critics -- one might even call him its ideologue -- Thomas Craven, in his 1934 book "Modern Art: The Men, the Movement, the Meaning," had earlier blown the same trumpet. "The artist is losing his masculinity," Craven growled. "The tendency of the Parisian system is to disestablish sexual characteristics, to merge the two sexes in an androgynous third, containing all that is offensive in both. Once [male artists] contract la v�role Montparnasse -- the pox of the Quarter -- they become jaded and perverse...They found magazines in which their insecurity is attested by the continual insulting of America, hymns to homosexuality and miscegenation... It is this sort of life that captures American youth and emasculates American art."

Not only was homosexuality illegal and known homosexuals jailed or condemned to horrific "treatments" by psychiatric ghouls in mental hospitals, but the very art movement that had made Wood a central figure was unrelenting in its condemnation of same-sex orientation. Wood's exposure would have threatened not only his reputation but his income as well.

It was in this context that in 1935 he contracted a marriage with a former actress, Sarah Moxon, to the great surprise of his friends and family. But he soon alienated Sara by falling in love with her handsome, 20-something son from a previous marriage, installing this rather louche and exploitative if decorative young chap in their home, and lavishing money and attention on him, even considering adopting him at one point.

At the same time, Wood also kept a secretary, Paul Rinard, another in the series of slightly-built, dark-haired young men with whom the painter surrounded himself, and with whom he was also in love -- albeit unrequited. All these boys under one roof eventually were too much for Sara, and the brief marriage ended in acrimony.

There were several points in Woods' life at which exposure of his homosexuality seemed imminent. In the late 1920s, he was blackmailed by a young man over their relations. And though he piled layers of protective cover on his public image, Wood was stifling in his closet, and from time to time this was reflected in his painting.

In 1937, he produced for sale by mail a lithograph, "Sultry Night," that showed a handsome, full frontal nude man beside an outdoor bathtub pouring a bucket of water in a slow cascade over his head. Declaring the work to be an example of pornography, the censors at the US Postal Service barred its publisher from distributing it or featuring the image in its catalogues (although not banning the many female nudes the publisher carried).

Wood was forced to publicly defend the "innocence" of the work as a recalled scene from his boyhood, something Evans demonstrates was more than unlikely.

Evans' book is much more than a biography -- it is also a lesson in looking and seeing. Evans is blessed with a felicitous gift of description that makes his dissections and deconstructions of Wood's art not only enlightening but also enjoyable. And as an openly gay man, Evans is not blind to the multitude of clues in Wood's paintings that signal the artist's queer sensibility and even homoerotic sentiments that most previous critics have ignored.

Even those not steeped in the arcanae of art criticism will find Evans' descriptions of what the paintings mean an engrossing read, all the more so because these works are included among the book's many illustrations. Readers may judge for themselves whether or not his interpretations are on track -- as I think they are.

Wood's reputation fell with the rise of abstract art in the post-World War II period, but a revival of interest in him began in 1983 with an exhibition that, as Evans notes, "coincided nicely with the dawn of the Reagan era. In Wood's sunny, presumably uncomplicated imagery, conservative art critics could have found no more perfect illustration of President Reagan's relentless optimism and call to `traditional American values.'"

But in "Grant Wood: A Life," Evans reveals the dark ironies in Wood's portrayals of heartland America and its culture that he traces back to Wood's love of H. L. Mencken, whose contempt for that backwater culture and its "booboisie" he shared. It is evident in Wood's work for those who wish to see it, and Evans is a reliable guide.

In the book's epilogue, Evans pays tribute to Paul Rinard, Wood's last secretary, who entered politics after serving in the navy in World War II. Rinard became a powerful backroom policy broker, first with Iowa's liberal governor Harold Hughes in the 1960s, then joining the staff of Senator John Culver, who at Rinard's funeral in 2000 called him "the intellectual godfather of Iowa's progressive agenda for half a century."

From the 1970s on, Rinard was "a defender of gay and lesbian civil rights -- a courageous stance that struck even Culver's younger staffers as radical... It would be difficult to explain Rinard's commitment to this issue," writes Evans, "especially during a period when its advocates were so scarce, without taking into account his profound loyalty to Wood. The artist might have led a far happier life, Rinard believed, had he been able to live in a more authentic way -- safeguarded from the fear of losing his job, his reputation, or both, for being exposed as a homosexual."

Gay activist friends of mine from Iowa who knew and greatly appreciated Rinard tell me that Evans paean to him is not misplaced.

Tripp Evans' book is not only sure to change the way the art world looks at Grant Wood and his work, it is also a valuable contribution to this country's cultural history, and one that shows the insidious homophobia that has often shaped that history. This is a splendid, beautifully written book. -- Reviewed by DOUG IRELAND in Gay City News,October 27,2010

An amazing work of insight into an artist, October 25, 2010
As a big fan of Grant's work and an artist myself I have always been interested in and searched for what inspires artists and how that influences their work. When I mention Grant to people they often look blank until you say "The painting of the man and woman with a pitchfork" and then all becomes clear. Evan's with his new book about Grant opens up a whole world of Grant and not only what influenced this man to produce an amazing piece of history in his painting "American Gothic" but a side of Grant we have never been able to know about as a man. In the past searching for information about Grant Wood I was never able to find anything that really felt more than superficial and at a distance about Grant Wood the man. This is the book that finally fills in all the gaps with not only heart but a true love for Grant Wood. If you have ever wondered what makes an artist and artist and how his life influences what he or she produces then this book will amaze you. Even if you have ever thought you were not a big fan of artists and art I think this book will move you just to understand the story of a man and his internal struggle to be himself and how he expressed that in his art.

Grant Wood a Life by R. Tripp Evans, November 7, 2010
The biography, "Grant Wood a Life" by R. Tripp Evans is highly detailed about the public and private life of the famous Iowa artist. We learn more about the psychological reasons why Wood painted each of the few things he produced in his lifetime. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the lives of artists/painters It is an easy and comprehensive read. TomT ... Read more

Editorial Review

Gail Collins, New York Times columnist and bestselling author, recounts the astounding revolution in women's lives over the past 50 years, with her usual "sly wit and unfussy style" (People).

When Everything Changed begins in 1960, when most American women had to get their husbands' permission to apply for a credit card. It ends in 2008 with Hillary Clinton's historic presidential campaign. This was a time of cataclysmic change, when, after four hundred years, expectations about the lives of American women were smashed in just a generation.

A comprehensive mix of oral history and Gail Collins's keen research--covering politics, fashion, popular culture, economics, sex, families, and work--When Everything Changed is the definitive book on five crucial decades of progress. The enormous strides made since 1960 include the advent of the birth control pill, the end of "Help Wanted--Male" and "Help Wanted--Female" ads, and the lifting of quotas for women in admission to medical and law schools. Gail Collins describes what has happened in every realm of women's lives, partly through the testimonies of both those who made history and those who simply made their way.

Picking up where her highly lauded book America's Women left off, When Everything Changed is a dynamic story, told with the down-to-earth, amusing, and agenda-free tone for which this beloved New York Times columnist is known. Older readers, men and women alike, will be startled as they are reminded of what their lives once were--"Father Knows Best" and "My Little Margie" on TV; daily weigh-ins for stewardesses; few female professors; no women in the Boston marathon, in combat zones, or in the police department. Younger readers will see their history in a rich new way. It has been an era packed with drama and dreams--some dashed and others realized beyond anyone's imagining. ... Read more

Reviews

We've Come A Long Way, Baby - But We Still Have A Long Way to Go, October 26, 2009
From June Cleaver to Hillary Clinton, Gail Collins` new book, When Everything Changed, reminds us of both how much everything has changed for American women in the last 50 years and just how little. Collins writes skillfully about the "olden" days when a glamour career for a woman was to be a stewardess and when the reason most women went to college to get a "Mrs.".

As accessible as she is on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, and as wryly funny, Collins illustrates the historical facts with the stories of real women including those whose names we all know (Hilary Clinton, Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama) as well as those we would probably not know unless we read her book.

What Collins does particularly well though is to highlight that there still isn't gender parity in America's workplaces or homes. She ends on a note that celebrates how far we've come with a reality check - the gender pay gap still exists, too few women serve as CEOs or sit on corporate boards and the work-life balance conundrum has yet to be resolved.

When Everything Changed is an inspiring book. If we have forgotten the sacrifices and struggles of women who blazed the trail and take the fact that they changed the world, we should be reminded. And even if we haven't, Collins shows us that we have miles to go before we sleep.

Here's how America's I.Q. was doubled, October 25, 2009
Revolutions with the greatest lasting impact are sometimes the quietest events of their time, a description that applies to the dazzling struggle for equality that American women waged from 1960 to the present.

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra O'Connor tells of graduating from Stanford Law School and being unable to get a job in any Phoenix law firm except as a file clerk. She grew up on an Arizona ranch where her Dad expected her to handle almost every job done by men; yet, even with a Stanford law degree, she was virtually shut out of the legal profession in Arizona.

Her court nomination was heralded as a major breakthrough. Why? Why is recognition of anyone's intelligence a "breakthrough"? Collins is a gifted writer who explains why equality is so radical, yet so just and inevitable.

O'Connor's career, and that of millions of other women during the past 50 years, is a genuine "revolution" in social attitudes. It changed America and the world without a shot being fired and only a few bras burnt. Accepting women as equals in all endeavours doubles the intelligence of any society. Fifty years ago, women had the choice of career or housework. Today, women have the right to hold almost any job (except submarine crews) they want.

It's a long complex and continuing effort. After the Equal Rights Amendment was abandoned, women by the millions set out to win their rights one issue and one job at a time. Collins tells a masterful story based on personal efforts. The "revolution" was privatized; nothing could stop it. This isn't a book of dull theory, bewildered opposition, political theory or arcane legal savvy; it is the stories of hundreds of people who made Equal Rights a fact of American life and an example for the world.

Often, great events are the product of great leaders motivated by great ideals. Instead, the campaign for women's rights involved dozens of leaders plus millions of individuals. This mass movement made it an inevitable event, despite the rage of Schlafly, Bryant and other conservatives who can't respect the right of people to make their own decisions.

The difference is subtle, yet profound. Personally, I grew up in a society whose formal head is the Queen of England. It took until the 1980s, and Canadians hailed it as a major breakthrough in equality, for a woman to be named Governor General of Canada (the Queen's representative). Really. Is it a cultural breakthrough when a woman is appointed to represent a woman? Or is it a century overdue?

For Canadians, a woman representing a woman is major progress. Yet, this incident typifies similar idiocies in the U.S. It is so logical as to defy explanation. However, changing attitudes is a genuine revolution. What is so strange about allowing anyone to use their full intelligence? Yet, as Collins deftly illustrates, it takes a lot of quiet cleverness to penetrate the fog of the status quo.

Collins cites example after example, showing how individuals overcame the idiocy of the incumbency. It is a beautiful, inspiring and very timely book in response to those who always say "No!" to every decent new idea.

a book for all, but especially for young women, November 6, 2009
Gail Collins has written a revealing book both for those women of a "certain age" who lived through the events she chronicles and for those who are too young to know how difficult a journey it has been. The names everyone knows are here but the real beauty of this book lies in the stories of those unheralded and brave women who, at great personal cost, stood their ground and made a difference. Collins's witty, concise, reportorial style makes for a delightful read, once past the somewhat leaden introduction.

I learned many surprising things about where we were in the decades of my early adulthood and about how we came to be where we are now, as well as how far we have to go if we do not backslide. Collins skillfully puts the progress of women into the larger picture of social history.

This book is my holiday gift of choice for all the women in my family, especially daughters and daughters-in-law. They are the ones who will continue the amazing journey, provided they heed the warnings Collins implies.

A terrific book, but more "herstory" needed, November 7, 2009
There is something ironic in finding a link to an excerpt of this book in AARP's website. This is a book as much for my daughter as for those in my generation who lived through this entire period. Gail Collins has done a stellar job of telling the story of women's struggle for equality during these past five decades, with enough wit and anecdotes to make the narrative always lively. But I hope others will follow suit and write about stories she didn't have the space to include -- for example, about the women who flooded therapy programs, graduating with a new consciousness which was passed to their primarily female clients; about the women whose novels and criticism changed a generation's mind (e.g., THE WOMEN'S ROOM, WRITING A WOMAN'S LIFE, BELOVED, THE WOMAN WARRIOR, et al); the women who bankrolled the movement at critical moments, such as Peg Yorkin, Joan Palevsky, and Barbara Dobkin, among others and those that changed the landscape using the resources of major institutions like the Ford Foundation); the women whose efforts on campuses transformed undergraduate and graduate learning, including curriculum, pedagogy, and the canon; the women who fought for and gained some equality in the major religions; the women, like Judy Chicago, whose The Dinner Party opened the door to looking at herstory from a new artistic perspective. So my only quibble with the book is that it did not include as much social, intellectual, literary, and artistic history as I may have wished. However, its political history is superb. I hope Ms. Collins or others will follow suit and write a companion volume.

Great Herstory!, November 6, 2009
Finally, someone has written an accessible, readable book about a critical period in American history. I thoroughly enjoyed reading "When Everything Changed." This is a wonderful, creative, and informative book about a revolution that seems to have gone unnoticed. For those of us who lived through these tumultuous times, the book is a refresher, a reminder of the struggle that was both personal and historical in nature. For those of you under thirty-five, it is a must read. You must know where you have been, to know where you are, so that you can know where you are going. You must understand your Herstory. (My only negative is minor. I understand that Ms. Collins did not set out to write the "definitive" history of the time period. But, I was distracted from some of the main points by too much reliance on the individual stories. On occasions, I felt overwhelmed by too much anecdotal information, too many quotations, and too many stories of individuals; albeit, fascinating in there own right. More analysis and less reliance on individual stories would have made this a truly great book.) On the whole, however, I highly recommend this book to all. I only wish this book was published when I was teaching my Herstory Unit! Oh, the stories you would be able to tell your students....It should be in every library from middle school and up. It should be on the reading list of every history teacher. Everyone will enjoy this excellent history.

A Fast-Moving and Involving History with No Hidden Agenda, January 5, 2010
My lovely and accomplished daughter gave WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED to me for the holidays. This was a most thoughtful gift, since Gail Collins is among my favorite newspaper columnists. IMHO, her columns are sensible and elegant and often hilarious. Further, she never wastes her space. To me, she reads like the second-coming of Russell Baker, albeit more focused on politics than the strangeness of modern life. She is superior with my morning coffee.

The subtitle of WEC--The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present--pretty much sums up the intentions of Collins in this book, which is to provide an overview of how everything changed over 50 tumultuous years. To do so, she devotes the first section of her three-part book to the expectations and opportunities women faced in America in 1960. Then, part two examines how opportunity exploded for women in the mid 1960's. Finally, section three explores the backlash provoked by social change and then follows the experiences of a range of American women through the 70's, 80's, 90's, and the 00's.

At the end of section three, she observes: "So there you are. American women had shattered the ancient traditions that deprived them of independence and the right to have adventures of their own, and done it so thoroughly that few women under 30 had any real concept that things had ever been different."

There was much to like about this book. But I especially enjoyed the story of Howard Smith playing games with the Civil Rights Act and its historic unintended consequences; the overview of women in the civil rights movement; the respectful treatment of the maddening Phyllis Schafly; the analysis of the failed Comprehensive Child Development Act; and the discussion of Clinton's run for the presidency and its aftermath. For me, Collins's treatment of these subjects was especially fresh and revealing. At the same time, this work had, like the rest of the book, great clarity, sly humor, and a light touch. Never is her work pedantic, poorly paced, or boring.

Regardless, there was one tiny shortcoming in WEC, which I must point out to the Amazon.com community. Not to spoil everything; but Collins wrote this 471 page book without a single reference to Seamus, the Irish setter Mitt Romney strapped to the roof of the car during a family trip to Canada. (Her loyal readers know what I'm talking about.)

Otherwise, excellent and recommended.

I wasn't paying attention. . ., February 11, 2010
I lived through all of this, so I thought I would be familiar with all Collins had to report. I was in error. I may have been alive, but I was not noticing. I remember many of the events, but I did not react at the time to their importance. This book became, then, a necessary lesson in what I lived through and profited by but paid too little attention to.

Most informative to the reader are the author's many personal interviews that portray the details of the daily lives of American women of the era. This is not library research. It is woman to woman sharing of memories, frustrations and small victories that took place as "everything changed".

I asked for this book for Christmas, I have given it several times as presents and when it gets to paperback, I may just stand on a street corner and give it to every woman passing by.

A Must Read for Women!, March 6, 2010
Can you figure out this answer to this riddle?
"A man and his son were in a car accident. The man died on the way to the hospital, but the boy was rushed into surgery. The surgeon said "I can't operate, for that's my son!" How is this possible?"

When I first heard this riddle as a girl in the `70's I was stumped for the answer. Thanks to the women's movement modern girls are probably (hopefully!) quickly able to discern the answer. This is because everything has changed for women. While the glass ceiling still exits and stereotypes abound, generally, women are free to be, do, and own almost anything that was once reserved for men only.

When Everything Changed by Gail Collins details the historical changes from 1960 to the present, and examines the impact of these events on the lives of ordinary women. As Collins explains, once upon a time, men and women existed in different societal spheres, with men occupying the higher level:

Then, suddenly, everything changed. The cherished convictions about women and what they could do were smashed in the lifetime of many women living today. It happened so fast that the revolution seemed to be over before either side could really find its way to the barricades. And although the transformation was imperfect and incomplete, it was still astonishing.

When Everything Changed is an entertaining, but more importantly, a knowledgeable book of recent history that should be read by women of all ages!


Oh and here is the answer to the riddle: the surgeon is the boy's mother.


Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (October 14, 2009), 480 pages
Review Copy Provided Courtesy of the Publisher.

Amazing Journey Doesn't Even Start to Describe It, January 12, 2010
This book hit very close to home to me, as I identified with so many of the women Ms. Collins interviewed. Not just the fascinating stories, but the broad sweep of history in the woman's movement from 1960 to the present. From my 60's childhood, to coming of age during the early days of "libbers" (the name I recall hearing most often), the sweeping changes of the 70's, the having it all '80's, through the reality of the 90's and today.
As I sat there and pondered what it all meant as witness and participant, Ms. Collins summed it up for me in the final paragraph: " . . . But women did not figure out how to keep marriage from crumbling into divorce, and they were not particularly successful in making their lovers grow into dependable husbands. They had not remade the world the way the revolutionaries had hoped. But they had created a world their female ancestors did not even have the opportunity to imagine."
One minor issue: I would have preferred the biographical information about the women interviewed at the beginning of the book, not the end. I honestly couldn't keep their names and stories straight.

Reaching for Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited, January 5, 2010
Flight attendants, along with millions of other women and men, who hired on or committed to various jobs and work in the USA from 1960 to the present, will surely find Gail Collins' book When Everything Changed, The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present a powerful and accurate account.

Collins' research includes many quotes and personal stories from the early 1960s to the present. Instances of gender based discriminatory practices range from some airlines' policy makers enforcing the firing of stewardesses for marriage, pregnancy, aging and weight. Unreasonable restrictions on women are also included in a story from a Kansas housewife explaining she did not even have her name on the deed to the house she and her husband purchased in 1960.

The pain of the set backs and the pleasure of ongoing successes are apparent through the stories of women who stood their ground and often created alternate routes for progress. Examples include Lorna Weeks' fight for a switchman's job at Southern Bell in one of the first victories on the road to try to end job discrimination against women. Some airline stewardesses, experiencing severe discriminatory policies from employers, showed up at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission offices being set up to implement and oversee the Civil Rights Act of 1964 even before the office furniture and typewriters were unpacked. The newly founded National Organization for Women (NOW) was so inundated with mail that it lacked enough staff to sign up the women trying to become NOW members.

Backlash efforts against the women's liberation movement are documented and followed up by the enduring efforts of women and men to "make it after all." There are pivotal points in the 1970s when the efforts of women are focused on education and serious efforts that required long term commitments. Hillary Clinton's campaign as a serious candidate for president of the USA during the first decade of the twentieth first century is a strong testament to the effectiveness of changes from 1960 to the present.

I yearned for an accurate account of the amazing journey of American women from 1960 to the present. Gail Collins' book When Everything Changed, supported with its impressive bibliography and index, met my expectations. I highly recommend this book as a must read for women and men of all ages.

Georgia Panter Nielsen, author, retired career flight attendant and retiree organizer ... Read more

Editorial Review

Reviews

"I Should Want Everything Told, Everything.", May 30, 2010
The great novelist E. M. Forster on the subject of his posthumous legacy wanted everything told. Wendy Moffat, to her credit, certainly does just that. In A GREAT UNRECORDED HISTORY, a quotation from Forster, as are all the chapter headings, Moffat draws from his journals and a "locked diary" that he kept for sixty years as well as interviews with his friends. She also includes voluminous notes and an extensive bibliography at the end of this most informative and heartwarming biography.

It of course has been long known by readers that Forster's novel MAURICE and a collection of short stories THE LIFE TO COME, dealing with love and sex between men, were published at his direction only after his death in 1970. Moffat writes extensively about MAURICE. One of the most moving portions of this biography appears early when Forster-- he was called "Morgan" by friends and family"-- showed a typewritten copy of the novel to Christopher Isherwood. His eyes wet with tears, Isherwood told Forster that he found the novel "wonderful and brave." Isherwood encouraged Forster to publish the novel-- in 1928, 1948, 1951-- to no avail, however. Forster finished MAURICE before he ever touched another man-- he had his first sexual encounter when he was 37-- and certainly that is one of the saddest facts about Forster's life. Sergeant Leonard Matlovich-- discharged from the USAF for being openly gay-- said something similar in his autobiography when he remembered that he had never touched another human being until he was well into adulthood. Through the years a copy of MAURICE made the rounds of Forster's friends although T. E. Lawrence chose not to read it. The author later in his life revised the novel to give it a happier ending.

In an example of life imitating art, as in the novel, Forster chose men from the lower classes as lovers. He, for example, remembered forty years after his affair with the Egyptian tram conductor Mohammed el Adl that this friendship was one of the two '"greatest things"' in his life. The two men had a single suit made for each of them to wear. It was slightly too big for Adl and a litle small for Forster. He was devastated when Adl died of consumption at the age of 23. He kept for the rest of his life studio photographs of Adl, the ticket stub from their first tram ride together and Adl's letters to him: "Do not forget your ever friend." Forster's longest relationship was with Bob Buckingham, a British policeman he met in 1930 who like Adl, married and named a child Morgan after Forster. Buckingham and his wife May-- with whom Forster became good friends in the most interesting of triangles-- were with him when the writer died in 1970.

Forster's homosexuality was at the center of who he was. He essentially stopped writing fiction for publication after A PASSAGE TO INDIA, which became a best seller and made him rich, because he believed he could not write about gay characters although he would never have used the word "gay" to describe the love between two men. Throughout his long life--he died at the age of 91-- Forster met other writers and moved in literary circles, both gay and otherwise, around the world, including the United States where he made two visits: D. H. Lawrence, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, C. P. Cavafy (Forster believed that meeting the very "out" Greek poet was one of the most fortunate things that happened to him), Henry James (to whom he did not warm) and Gore Vidal whom he did not like at all. He also wrote the libretto for Benjamin Britton's opera from Melville's BILLY BUDD and became friends with Paul Cadmus who included him in one of his paintings and George Platt Lynes who photographed him and Bob Buckingham on their visit to the U. S.

In what has to be one of the most unusual dinner parties ever held--"Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?"-- on their visit to the United States, Forster and Buckingham were the guests of honor at a party hosted by Glenway Wescott and Monroe Wheeler. Also in attendance were Joseph Campbell and Dr. Alfred Kinsey. What the two Brits did not know was that the theme of the party--Wescott and Wheeler's parties always had themes-- was sex although Forster and Buckingham rose to the occasion. Bob invited Kinsey to visit England to see Scotland Yard's confiscated pornography and Morgan took comfort in learning-- as did he-- that Kinsey believed that homosexual men were as much a male as heterosexual men although he chose not to discuss his sex life with the sex researcher.

It is easy to criticize Forster for the life he chose to live-- his relationship with his mother, for example. Apparently he always bowed to her wishes. In his own words: '"We were a classic case."' Other writers published gay works without having their careers ruined: Christopher Isherwood, James Baldwin Andre Gide, to name three, although Forster quipped that Gide did not have a mother. There is much, however, to admire about his life. He spoke out in defense of D. H. Lawrence and Radclyffe Hall and their right to publish LADY CHATTERLY'S LOVER and WELL OF LONELINESS. He also later in life advocated-- if cautiously-- for gay rights, supporting the Wolfenden Report that recommended that "homosexual acivity between consenting adults over the age of twenty-one be no longer a criminal offense." And Forster tried to bridge the gap between social classes, no easy task for a man of his time and station. Finally his friend Eudora Welty in her review of Forster's collection of short stories THE LIFE TO COME said that "his greatness surely had root in his capacity to treat all human relationships seriously and truthfully."

Ms. Moffat in this biography has created a really fine portrait of E. M Forster that brings to life this great writer and-- more importantly-- decent and good person.

Illuminating and engrossing, May 27, 2010
It's not an easy thing to write with Forster-esque humanity, humor, and acute perception in any genre, but Wendy Moffat has done it here, in a biography of all things, writing a "new life" of E.M. Forster. I have loved Forster's work for a long time, and built an image of him in my head...so it was a risk, a bit, to read a biography of him....however, i've come out of it with my love intact and deepened. Moffat builds a portrait that I think Morgan Forster would have liked: amused, humane, casting a wide net to gather in all the parts of his life that informed his work. Which is nice, considering that Forster states his own agenda as "wishing to connect up all the fragments I was born with". Of course, within his lifetime, this was not possible to do - not publicly anyway: homophobic law and vicious anti-gay attitudes in early 20th century England made it necessary for him to conceal a great many parts of himself, and in consequence a great deal of his work.

Moffat situates his homosexuality where he did: right at the center of his life. From that understanding she works through his life to explain the mystery of why his last work was published in just his middle-age -- when he lived in sound mind and body much longer than that. In that seemingly barren time, we see a life teeming with connection and purpose. He was an avid patron and supporter of upcoming authors (many of them homosexual). He built a network of deep, sustaining friendships with men and women (of all stripes: mingling cab drivers and policemen with T.E. Lawrence and the Woolfs). He made quiet forays into advocacy against morality laws, and publicly defended young people endangered by them. At the same time, Forster searched for relationship and connection on another, romantic level: he wanted real affection and domestic bliss (not just sex) in a loving male-male relationship.

It's great fun getting to know Morgan Forster (as Moffat calls him), and all the other luminaries and regulars who wrote to him and of him in their letters and diaries. Which is something, considering the potentially heavy, even tragic, material. Moffat has an extraordinarily light touch, a quick, connective brain, and writes beautifully fluid prose. So it's an Important Book, for sure, but one you'll finish eagerly. How wonderful that we finally get to hear from a temperate genius on a subject we seem only now (barely) ready to understand: Forster wrote, at 85, "...how ANNOYED I am with Society for wasting my time by making homosexuality criminal. The subterfuges, the self-consciousness that might have been avoided." Indeed.

A fine, absorbing biography, May 28, 2010
Wendy Moffat's new biography opens in an amateur, theatrical way - probably the opening a literary agent demanded. But after she settles down to Forster's life and portrays the ways in which Forster crept out - passively and furtively - from his mother Lily's cruel thumb, the book is readable, insightful, well paced, and often highly absorbing. His Cambridge friends, from HOM to Leonard Woolf, reveal how central were his early university experiences. Later, the sexual relationships he managed to secure show an amazing tolerance for half-requited passion. Despite his core of passivity - he provided the equivalent of a lady's companion to his own mother - he managed to write several fascinating novels, all crisp with chagrin. HOWARDS END, we learn, is a superb rendering of aspects of Forster's experience, ably recalibrated to show both his extraordinary humanity and his terror of exposure. Alive with a good blend of specifics and analysis, Moffat's biography is recommended to those wanting a fresh portrait of a classic twentieth-century novelist whose star is gracefully falling.

Sexuality as Lens for Considering Forster's Life & Work, September 4, 2010
Moffat opens this biography by arguing that Forster felt his life could only be viewed from the perspective of his sexuality. This sets the stage for a book that explores Forster's life from multiple perspectives of his gay experience. Sex and Forster's lovers make up only a small part of this narrative. It becomes clear that coming to terms with his sexuality gave Forster access to a world of colleagues and life experiences that, otherwise, he only would have known obliquely and abstractly. The early chapters repeatedly refer to Forster's posthumous "Maurice" and how it drew from his experience and evolved as manuscript. Later chapters briefly return to the manuscript, in terms of how it brought together important colleagues in Forster's life. Moffat weaves together a variety of early and mid-20th century figures whose lives intersected with Forster's, including many important gay figures from literature and the arts. The meek, awkward Forster was, in some ways, an odd choice to be at the center of that world. He was a generation older and far more conservative than many of the men who drew him into their circles. yet, he was respected for his body of work and his humanist viewpoint.

Some aspects of Forster's life are better sketched than others, hence, 4 stars instead of 5. For example, the reader never really knows how Forster supported himself for the last 40+ years of his life, although the last couple decades apparently were quite comfortable. The attention to Forster's later years varies and his 50s, perhaps his happiest decade, pass quite quickly. The dynamics of his relationship with Bob Buckingham, and later, Buckingham's family is treated somewhat inconsistently and the middle years of the relationship are quite vague. Forster integrated Buckingham and Buckingham's wife into his social set, but the reactions of his literary friends and the Buckinghams are never really described. Forster is described as losing his empathy for women after he began to come out as a gay man, but this is not entirely convincing. He remained attentive to his mother and continued a variety of friendships with women. Under different circumstances and sexualities, the boy who never fit with other boys but finally found his peer group may have lost his need to heavily represent women in his work and his thinking. The evolution of Forster's thought, his exposure to foreign ways of thinking, and his adoption of a secular form of humanism is never fully explored or integrated. It is clear that acquired a set of ideals that were sorely tested I different spheres, particularly his romantic ideas about working class men. Finally, Moffat doesn't really explain how the Buckinghams' sexually whitewashed narrative came to be the dominant one in public descriptions of Forster in the initial years after his life.

Moffat convincingly presents a world in which the trials of Oscar Wilde silenced Forster in a way that they couldn't affect younger gay colleagues. At the same time, she notes the limitations of early relaxation of laws against homosexuality in the UK. She also notes the role of WWII and its more relaxed social codes on post-war movements for gay rights. She notes parallel, though obviously different circumstances for African-Americans, but oddly ignores the parallel for women in the US and Western Europe.

Overall, the book is a satisfying read and it has made me more interested in looking at the other writers who populated his world.

A wonderful biography of EM Forster, August 6, 2010
This fascinating, especially well written life of the great English writer E.M. Forster is splendid. Its complete account of Forster's homosexuality and its signal importance to him and the picture of gay and literary English life makes this book an original one. For the Forster devotee, it is a must. It illuminates his work subtly. For the reader who doesn't know Forster, it is a telling story of art, love and friendship and the resources and recourses of a banned sexuality. There is nothing reductive about this book. It opens the subject up. It will make you want to read Forster, which is a real pleasure.

Only One Aspect of E. M. Forster, December 12, 2010
Wendy Moffat offers in the new biography of E. M. Forster a unique but not necessarily valuable approach to his life and work. Her major strength was the access to his previously unpublished secret memoirs (not for long, an edition is finally announced for February 2011 although at 275GBP few will choose to buy it) and the fact influenced the book much more that it was worth.
"The New Life" turned out to be most sexual life. When you consider that Forster did not have any sex involving partners of any kind until he turned thirty-eight it is no mean feat and yet quite apparently not enough to make this book a valuable addition to the three biographies of the writer we already had: Furbank, King, and Beauman. Except for an addition to what had already been said (and usually better) of some rather uninspiring details of Forster's sex life, there is little that is new here. Actually, one can hardly speak of details as Forster described them in a personal code, always afraid that his diaries might be discovered and he would end up in jail.
Intended to commemorate the novelist's 130th anniversary the book falls flat and any readers interested in the life of E. M. Forster (and those who like to read bulky volumes) are strongly recommended to look up either the work of Furbank (if they want Forster's version of his life) or that of Beauman (if they want some more or less educated guesses about what Forster preferred to cover up). If you prefer something less bulky (and nicely illustrated) Francis King remains the natural choice.

Great new insights into Forster's life, August 18, 2010
I've always loved Forster and this is the first biography that made me feel like I had an intimate glimpse into his interior life. I highly recommend!

Craig Seymour, author of All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C.

A terrific read and re-creation of a fascinating era and writer, September 30, 2010
I have long been intrigued by the movies based on Forster's novels, but I somehow had missed getting around to the actual books. Ms. Moffat's masterful and engrossing biography gives a tremendous feeling for Forster and his wide circle of literary and musical friends - Virginia Woolf, Isherwood, Britten, etc., - and the evolving times. I am stopped en route to read each novel as it was created, developed and discussed, so I am finally immersed, and very pleasurably, in getting acquainted with this wonderful output. I will certainly keep going later with Forster's lectures on "Aspects of the Novel" and a couple of the Kindle recommended studies of Forster which I've already downloaded. Five stars and thanks to Ms. Moffat and to E.M.

Compelling and Depressing, June 25, 2010
Wendy Moffat does what she can with E.M Forster's life, a gay life that very few knew about thanks to an overly cautious author. After decades in the closet, Forster did succeed in connecting with men of different backgrounds, and there are some compelling portraits here of J.D. Ackerly and the great love of his life, Bob Buckingham. Through it all, Forster comes across as a frustrating figure, concerned with his public image right up until his death and unfortunately depriving Moffat, and the reader, of a richer subject matter.

Sex and more sex..., September 26, 2010
I already knew a lot about E. M. Forster. I am a rare book dealer and have handled a number of his first editions and his letters over the years. I have read Lago and Firbank's two volume Selected Letters. Also Das's E. M. Forster's India, P. N. Furbank's biography of Forster, and used B. J. Kirkpatrick's Bibliography of E. M. Forster. Moffat is arrogantly on a first name relationship with the late author from the get go. She calls him Morgan throughout. She proceeds in some 400 plus pages to relate nearly everything the man did or wrote to his latent and then very active homosexuality. She almost revels in her attempts to shock... It doesn't work. Reminds me of when you are better off not knowing everything about an author you admire. Same thing happened to me on learning of the dark sides of T. H. White and Roald Dahl. This book probably should have remained a dissertation. Be forewarned - this is an unending detailed relation of every sex act she could dig up from his private papers. Disappointing in the extreme. Adds little... ... Read more

Editorial Review

Reviews

A History We Need to Remember, November 3, 2010
Years before the women's movement, black women and white women risked their lives and livelihoods in the struggle for racial justice in the South. This is their story, largely untold before this book. Each account is a unique take on the civil rights movement and its impact on our country, our culture, and, most certainly, its participants. You have to be filled with admiration for the bravery of these strong women, and fascinated by the ways their lives were permanently altered by the civil rights movement.

The accounts also remind us, in a very personal way, of the terrible injustices of segregation and of our national government's indifference to the violence directed against African Americans and their allies. Will the same kind of stories be told in fifty years by Latino immigrants to our country?

This book should spark great discussions about civil rights, human rights, women's rights, and the rule of law in almost any book discussion group. It's also a wonderful book for high school civics and history teachers to excerpt for their classes. And it is a fascinating study of the organization of a mass movement.

A Book That Touches the Soul of the Freedom Movement, December 15, 2010
This is a wonderful and fascinating book that illuminates the soul of the Freedom Movement of the 1960s. There are many excellent histories of the Civil Rights Movement that provide the chronologic details of events & outcomes, and many fine biographies that examine the lives of the central figures. But the movement was at heart a mass movement of ordinary people transforming their lives, and the lives of others, with extraordinary courage. In Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC 52 women describe in their own words the roots, the meaning, and the personal effect of their own participation.

James Baldwin once observed that: "The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do." No book in recent memory better illustrates the essential truth of that observation than Hands on the Freedom Plow.

This is not a book that has to be read in sequence first page to last. Rather, it reminds me of the Talmud, a sea of subjects, insights, experiences, points of view, and historical periods that you sail on voyages of discovery. Each time you dip into it, in whatever chapter, it reveals something new and fascinating.

--Bruce Hartford
... Read more

Editorial Review

New discoveries about the textile arts reveal women's unexpectedly influential role in ancient societies. Barber "weaves the strands of mythology and literature, archaeology, ethnology, and documented history into a rich tapestry" says John Noble Wilford, New York Times Book Review. Photos and drawings. Author lectures. ... Read more

Reviews

It's no work to read this book!, November 21, 2003
This book covers a huge amount of information without ever being dry or boring. The tone is conversational throughout and incredibly interesting. The author shows us the oldest surviving fragment of cloth (a wool plaid from 800 B.C.) and then weaves a replica herself to see how long it would have taken to make. There are examples of Greek pottery showing women weaving at warp-weighted looms, which allows the author to tell us about the migration of peoples by describing finds of loom weights in Egypt. Other pottery fragments show women walking and hand spinning at the same time, and then a drawing of the Venus de Milo, with arms drawn on, shows that her arms are in the same position and she was very likely spinning thread. It's a marvelous book that's as easy to understand as a conversation over a fence with your neighbor. In fact, there's a picture of two modern Hungarian girls doing just that while wearing their typical bell-like national costume, and beside this picture is a scene from a mid-first millennium B.C. vase found in Hungary showing a very similar costume. The author moves us back and forth through history and across the continents with ease and interest. It's a fabulous book.

Brilliant, June 26, 2002
I bought this book after attending some lectures Wayland Barber gave at Grinnell College. Amazingly well-researched, well-argued, and thought provoking, this book isn't in the least bit dry or heady. Thoroughly academic, but still a pleasent read! Tracing the global connections of development and using several disciplines to gather evidence makes for an amazing work. Who would have known linguistics to be so important to textile history? Or how much textile history can tell us not only about social history, but political history as well. Read this book.

Who knew string could be so interesting?, April 19, 2000
I had the privelege of attending a lecture by the author recently, and ran out immediately after to get the book. It is clearly written and obviously well researched, and Barber has a refreshing, unique perspective in archaeology: she views her subject from more than one angle. Looking at "women's work" as an archaeologist, linguist and weaver, Barber is able to see the bigger picture, and points out gaping holes in most prehistoric civilization studies: little, if any, mention of textile production, and its sweeping impact on early society. Barber has reproduced many of these textiles herself, and in my mind, this practical experience makes her more than just another academician spouting theory. The book is a good read, and thankfully the author does not use this material to plug any revisioinist-history agenda. I look forward to her next book, possibly a study connecting language, archaeology, etc., with regard to textiles found in N.W. South America that have a stiking similarity to some Asian textiles. This was brought up as a final point in the lecture: we all await the next chapter!

Fascinating!, July 22, 1998
This is a scholarly yet easily read book about the history of textiles, from basic string to complex weaves, and also about the fascinating history of the social development of humanity, from hunter-gatherers on.

The author's research is thorough and includes archeological evidence, analysis and identification of artifacts, maps and descriptions of trade routes, consideration of stories and myths, photographs, letters, and even human physiology. Her theories, including why women are absent from most historical records and what the Venus de Milo was doing with her now-missing arms, are eye-opening and firmly grounded in her extensive research.

Further, this book covers a lot of ground as well as time. Geographically, areas from the Eastern reaches to Europe and down into Egypt are presented, and comparisons between ancient and modern costumes and traditions are made.

During the course of the book the author makes the cogent point that archeologists and historians m! ight do well to attempt recreation of artifacts found (using time-appropriate methods); her own experiences in making such a recreation is telling and amusing. Likewise, her observations on customs and costumes (those which have survived, those which have not, and possible reasons why) suggest that sociology has much to add to our understanding of history, of the hows and whys humans have lived and developed.

I found this book to be suprising, thought-provoking, entertaining, and a good reference source. I have presented copies to two of my friends (they kept borrowing my copy!), and will it serve as a gift to three more (who keep trying to borrow mine, but I've learned my lesson).

One of the best books I've ever read, August 25, 2005
Anyone interested in so-called gender studies, textiles, prehistory, or just in regular people ought to read this book. The authoress, in incredibly simple language (she can't REALLY be an academic, can she?), tells the story of women and the textile work that has (pre-) historically been theirs. Bringing the insight that only a practicing weaver or spinner could have to the dusty world of archeology, she sweeps the reader into the homes of real people. Lots of metaphors, but honestly, it's that kind of book: rich. I only wish I could read it again for the first time.

Incredible history of women and fiber art, May 10, 2004
As a fiber artist, I am very interested in the history of fiber. Elizabeth Barber's "Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years" is fantastic, both as a history of the use of fibers and as a history of working women. I learned a great deal about women's role in society from her research, and it makes me proud to be a modern woman working with fiber, just as my ancestors did. Highly recommended!

A textile lover's delight, and great for history buffs as well., June 21, 2006
I bought this book on the recomendation of my spinning instructor. I was expecting the documentation of early spinning and weaving techniques, and the discussion of preserved textiles. I wasnt expecting to be inspired to go out and buy a copy of the Iliad and the Odyssey to read about the textile and history references that she brings up! I had no idea that Greek mythologies mention items of clothing that have been found in the area and dated to pre-Greco times....and were stil identifiable items of clothing in the last century.
Basically this book is a textile and history junkies best fix.
If you are a re-creationist,(such as the SCA) or particpating in Lving History demonstrations, you will definately want this book for its discussions of documented cloth finds,
If you like this book, you may also enjoy reading "Salt, a World History" as they mention several of the same places, and historical finds.

Fascinating Story, Gifted Storyteller, December 19, 2007
I ran across this book almost by accident. I was feeling rather glum one day, and I asked my wife to recommend a book for me - something that was out of the ordinary and would cheer me up. She recommended "Women's Work". I was a little skeptical that it would appeal to a techie guy like myself, but soon I was absorbed in Elizabeth Wayland Barber's storytelling.

"Women's Work" tells the story of textiles in human history. In nearly every society, spinning, weaving, and sewing have been done almost exclusively by women, so the history of textiles is also a history of women's work - or one important part of it. That's still reflected in our language, for example, when we refer to the "distaff side" - a distaff being a stick used to hold fiber for spinning.

Wayland Barber tells her story with with wit and clarity. And more than that, she tells the story of the story - that is, she traces not only what we know about textiles in ancient times, but describes how we know it. So, this is not only a fine history, but it's a fine, readable treatise on historiography as well.

I can warmly recommend this book to anyone interested in textiles, or women's history, or how history is written, or who has the blues and just wants to read a darn good book.

an accidental find that was just what I was looking for., February 18, 1999
I am an obstetrician/gynecologist, who was a hand weaver before going to medical school. I have always enjoyed reading about archeology. I didn't know I was looking for this book until I found it. The fiber arts have always been women's work. How women's production of fiber and fabrics was interwoven with the functioning of different ancient societies is explored in this very readable book. I was especially taken by the idea of the Fates as the midwives waiting for a delivery and spinning thread; and the newborn's fate is the spun thread.

Thank you!!, August 29, 2001
I always assumed that the sexual division of labor made sense at one time in history. Barber has researched and illuminated one aspect of the division, and through archeology and linguistics explained the importance the women's work had at one time, and what happened to it. And made it interesting, too. Thank you. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Reviews

An absorbing read, April 14, 2010
This is a wonderful retrospect of Jaime Hernandez and his career in comics, a tale so interesting it could be material for another comic book. Every page with text on it is overflowing with insight as Jaime shares his views on comics and his characters.

Author Todd Hignite has done some intensive research to put everything together. It's filled with comic art, personal sketches, discarded work, story ideas scribbled on notes and other stuff. Lots of covers and panels are laid out and discussed in terms of what you're seeing and you're not seeing (behind the scenes). And all of them are printed huge to show off the marvelous line art.

There are also some really cool photographs, such as from his childhood, his Mohawk hair days and some with him and his brothers behind a table at some comic con.

This book is an absorbing read. Highly recommended to fans of Jaime Hernandez and his comics.

(There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

The Art of Jaime Hernandez is a Triumph., March 27, 2010
Todd Hignite's superb monograph, The Art of Jaime Hernandez The Secrets of Life and Death, belongs on the shelf of every comic art enthusiast's bookcase. Filled with Jaime's beautifully staged and drawn Love and Rockets comic book pages (shot in full color from the original art, and presented as such), covers, illustrations, sketches, and photographs, the book is elegantly designed by Jordan Crane, and sets a new benchmark for sumptuous cartoon art books. Jaime's life and art are illuminated throughout this delightful volume with the same passionate insight and graphic perfectionism that made Hignite's magazine Comic Art a legend in academic, artistic, and collecting circles. My only (tongue-in-cheek) criticism of this book is that it's so outstanding, it makes the other cartoonist monographs I've collected pale by comparison. Comic art lovers will devour this book -- it's nothing less than a twelve-course feast for the eyes.

High and Low brow Art converge to defy Acadamia nuts, October 12, 2010
I have finally read the full text of this book. I enjoyed reading the interview based text dished out in small enough portions so the Artwork could take its rightful place. For weeks all I could do was to drink in the Art.

I enjoyed the childhood art every bit as much as the published. The big picture of Speedy and Esther from the cover of 'The Death of Speedy', is one of the highlights for me. Of course, it is great to see much of Maggie and Hopey. Gee, those girls really get into your system!

There are a number of enjoyable pictures from comics that influenced Xaime: Archie, Dennis the Menace, Super hero stuff. . .

If you are a Love & Rockets fan, this is a must. But if you're generally into Art, whether street scene or character, you can't go wrong here. The work these guys have done will be around for a long time. I am glad to have lived in the era of Los Bros.

Jaime Hernandez's coffee table book, April 8, 2010
It is a short piece in the NME (New Musical Express) in the mid-1980s, with all but a single image of Maggie I think, that made me aware of Love & Rockets and especially Jaime Hernandez's art. A classic, ligne claire approach to write and draw stories about youth gangs, punks, good-looking girls, super-heroes, science-fiction and such. Not to mention wrestlers. It was unheard of at the time excepted perhaps the French edition of Heavy Metal (M�tal Hurlant). I believe it was in 1987 that I managed to pick up my first original Love & Rockets trade paperback in France. Quite a revelatory book it was! I think I now have bought most of Jaime Hernandez's oeuvres. On reading The Art of Jaime Hernandez I learned with not that much surprise that though he is a Latino-American and I'm not, he started to draw at an early age same as I did, he read a lot of comics as a child and I read pretty much the same comics when I was a kid, he bigs up Moebius and I do that too, he listened extensively to music while a teenager and I also did that (though I never really got why Mott The Hoople is held as such a big, cult band), end-of-the-1970s punk music was a life defining event for him as it was for me, he formed a band and I did that too etc. So we are pretty much the same except that I never had the gut to try and publish my stuff. This coffee table book is very good at telling the tale of the Hernandez family, at putting forth what is so good and important in Maggie and Hopey's adventures, and at showing beautiful samples of Jaime's work. It is a must buy for all Jaime Hernandez fans and for all of us that believe that comics can be entertaining and meaningful at the same time.

Comic book artist, April 7, 2010
Great artist and a wonderful series of titles he co-created. Hernandez is a great in the field of comic book art! ... Read more

Editorial Review

Winner of the 1994 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, this brilliant work challenges the conventional wisdom that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet. ... Read more

Reviews

Brilliant Social History of the "Gay Male World", November 17, 2000
I read a lot of history, but generally not read social history. Nevertheless, this is one of the best books I have read in recent years. According to Author George Chauncey, who teaches at the University of Chicago, a "myth of isolation" "holds that, even if a gay world existed [in New York between 1890 and 1940], it was kept invisible." Chauncey's main premise is that, not only was there a gay New York beginning in the 1890s, it was not invisible.

In the marvelous introduction, Chauncey also makes the profound point that the gay male world of the pre-World War II era "was not a world in which men were divided into `homosexuals' and 'heterosexuals.'" Chauncey proceeds to explain: "This book argues that in important respects the hetero-homosexual binarism, the sexual regime now hegemonic in American culture, is a stunningly recent creation." Later in the introduction, Chauncey writes: "Heterosexuality, no less than homosexuality, is a historically specific social category and identity." Chauncey's study begins in the 1890s, "a time when New York was famous for being a `wide-open town,' [when] some clubs went so far as to stage live sexual performances." The so-called "Bowery resorts were only the most famous elements of an extensive, organized, highly visible gay world." At the turn of the century, men who were "`painted and powdered,' used women's names, and displayed feminine mannerisms" were called "fairies." According to Chauncey, fairies were tolerated, but not respected, in much of working-class society. During this period "Many men alternated between male and female sexual partners without believing that interest in one precluded interest in the other." Men, who "maintained a masculine demeanor and played...only the `masculine,' or insertive role in the sexual encounter" were not considered to be "queer." According to Chauncey: "many workingmen knew precisely were to go to find fairies with whom, if they chose, they need not exchange a word to make their wishes clear." Chauncey explains: "Most commonly, gay men simply offered to perform certain sexual acts, especially fellation, which many straight men enjoyed but many women (even many prostitutes) were loath to perform." If the sexual landscape was fluid in turn-of-the-century working-class New York, a more rigid adherence to the regime of heterosexuality was emerging in middle-class culture. By the 1920s, according to Chauncey, "the style of the fairy was more likely to be adopted by younger men and poorer men who had relatively little at stake in the straight middle-class world, where the loss of respect the fairy style entailed could be costly indeed." Chauncey explains that, in the first two decades of the 20th century, "heterosexuality became more important to middle-class than working-class men" because of the growing belief that "anyone who engaged in homosexual activity was implicated as `being' a homosexual." In Chauncey's view: "The insistence on exclusive heterosexuality emerged in part...in response to the [late-19th, early-20th century] crisis in middle-class masculinity....Middle-class men increasingly conceived of their sexuality - their heterosexuality, or exclusive desire for women - as one of the hallmarks of real men." According to Chauncey: "The association of the homosexual and the heterosexual with middle-class culture highlights the degree to which `sexuality' and the rooting of gender in anatomy were bourgeois productions," which explains why Chauncey asserts that the rigid heterosexual-homosexual dichotomy is a recent creation. This is historical exposition and analysis at its very best

Middle-class sensibilities also were at the center of efforts, beginning early in the 20th century, to police, if not suppress, the "city of bachelors." According to Chauncey: "The city was a logical destination for men intent on freeing themselves from the constraints of the family." In turn, according to Chauncey, middle-class reformers demonstrated a growing anxiety about the threat to the social order posed by men and women who seemed to stand outside the family." According to Chauncey, "World War I was a watershed in the history of the urban moral reform movement" because the war "embodied reformers' darkest fears and their greatest hopes, for it threatened the very foundations of the nation's moral order - the family, small-town stability, the racial and gender hierarchy." The streets of New York "were filled with soldiers and sailors," as a result of which, according to Chauncey, the war "threatened to expose hundreds of thousands of American boys from farms and small towns to the evil influences of the big city." Furthermore, as Chauncey puts it, although "[i]t is impossible to determine how many gay soldiers stayed in New York after the war,...it was, indeed, hard to keep them down on the farm after they've seen gay New York."

There is much else about this book to admire. After Chauncey defines the boundaries of his study, he devotes several chapters to describing in fascinating detail the gay male world in New York between 1890 and 1940, from YMCAs and rooming houses to saloons and gay bars to the baths to assignation hotels. I am simply in awe of the research Chauncey did for his chapter entitled "`Privacy Could Only Be Had in Public': Forging a Gay World in the Streets," the sources for which include not only the predictable secondary materials but also letters, interviews, oral histories, and court files in the New York Municipal Archives. There also is a fine selection of photographs, cartoons, and other visual aids.

The gay world in New York was tolerated by middle-class authorities as long as it did not spread to middle America or to threaten its values. During World War I, when thousands of young Americans in the military visited the city, the relatively open gay life there threatened to corrupt them, and that contributed to the creation of what Chauncey calls "police-state conditions," which evolved until they had firmly taken hold by 1940. I understand Chauncey currently is writing the history of gay New York from 1945 until 1975, and I await publication of that volume with great impatience.

Fresh Thinking About Gay History, June 15, 2002
Chauncey's book offers serious and original thinking about queer history and about general urban history as well. Freed from the myths that have persisted about the place of homosexuals in U.S. society, the author paints a new portrait of what transpired just before the turn of the last century and into the early decades of the 20th century.

The most important idea he explains is that the concepts of "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" as we understand them today didn't exist one hundred years ago. Chauncey's research shows that it was adherence to traditional gender role, rather than choice of sex partner, that labelled a man as either a "fairy" or "normal." The author provides detailed descriptions of the process by which working class men in particular could have sexual relations with other men and perserve a "normal" identity so long as the sex partners were effeminate. He uses extensive supporting materials that undergird his conclusions, including accounts of the "pansies" who were not, in fact, demeaned or ostracized but instead were tolerated, courted, and may even have served a vital purpose to working men who had relocated alone to the city to support families that lived elsewhere or to make their way into adulthood.

Chauncey shows how the definition of "invert"-- detour from standard gender role-- shifted gradually to the notion of "degenerate" or "homosexual"-- men who chose other men as sex partners. He makes clear how the emerging definition of homosexuality depended on a similarly new definition of heterosexuality. These subtle but powerful social mores are detailed at length, in convincing prose.

The book explains that there were places in early 20th century society for gays, countering the mistaken belief that the 1960's rebellions brought people out of the closet. The author hints, but doesn't explicitly state, that societal needs may have some not insubstantial effect on how prominent the gay people will be in our communities, or even how many young men may experiment with homosexuality for identity, financial need, or other reasons.

Chauncey's prose is vivid and evocative. He many times, especially in the early parts of the book, uses a hair-splitting preciseness with terms that can become tiresome to a reader. He also shows an academic's obsessiveness with source material: his book is chockful of lengthy source notes in the appendix and footnotes at the bottoms of the pages. These practices make his work explicit for purposes of academics but also tedious for general reading.

He employs other techniques that I believe weakened the impact of the reading. Chauncey summarizes a great deal at the end of each chapter, which dilutes the momentum of his historical survey. He is prone to repetitions of concepts and quotes. He also divided his themes such that each chapter covers expansive times. This has the reader continually moving back to the beginning of his chosen era, which diffuses the reader's sense of progressions over time. My sense is that he was not able to decide if the book were to be textbook for teaching, academic document for university colleagues, or general historical account. Nevertheless, his interesting prose, his unique perspectives, and his strong synthetic thinking make this an important work.

A treasure chest of forgotten lore, December 30, 2003
This book was preceded in my conciousness by high critical praise and so I approached it with great expectations. And in great part it met these expectations.

More than anything else, this is a work of love, being the excavation of forgotten facts in the history of gay life as it was lived by decades of gay men, experiences now mostly forgotten or scattered in obscure and fading documents. It is an extraordinary work of social archeology, resurrecting a world I never knew exisited. And Chauncey does this in exceptional detail, using clear prose, so that by the end the geography of this world has been salvaged and reconstructed, like Combray from Marcel's teacup.

As the book proceeds, the writing becomes stronger, particularly as the facts become more readily available, and the arguments and conclusions become more convincing. The last chapter is especially good on the submergence of gay life after Prohibition. This book is clearly one of the masterpieces of gay history, on par with John Boswell's work especially in it's dependence on primary sources.

The only criticism I have lies in the fact that Chauncey often has trouble shaping his information and often can't create a forest out of the trees. Especially in the earlier chapters, he often fails to make a summary statement without such a host of qualifiers that you wonder why he bothers in the first place. And as a previous reviewer has noted, there are alot of repetitions that a good editor should have corrected.

Despite all these reservations, for those interested in discovering a lost world, this book will be a revelation.

Fascinating "archeology" in the style of Foucault, August 10, 2000
Chauncey's work is an excellent primer on the history of sexuality, and on the very historically specific nature of "being gay" or "being straight." He is like Foucault, in that he rigorously approaches the "microhistory of sexuality," but unlike Foucault, Chauncey is clear and easy to read (which forsakes some of Foucault's theoretical sophistication). Chauncey's arguments are cogent and often surprising, and his documentation is impeccable.

This should be a rewarding read for anyone interested in social or urban history. Many people read this is book as a matter of self-identity, but don't let that make you think that it's a book only for gay people: I came to it as a heteroseuxal person who is interested in social and urban history, and found it an excellent, informative, educational, and entertaining read. I'm looking forward to more books from Chauncey.

History at its Finest, August 29, 2006

George Chauncey gave himself an incredibly daunting task when he set out to reconstruct the sexual and gender landscape that Gay Male New Yorkers inhabited from the fin de sielce until the beginning of World War II. In order meet this challenge, and make sense of the awe inspiring amount of research he was able to amass, Chauncey finds it necessary to set himself up with a mega question--what did it mean to be a gay man in New York during the period in question?--with a series of much smaller topical questions. From the myriad of smaller questions I have mined Chauncey's work in order to concentrate upon four questions. First, what was the dominant understanding gender, male sexuality and sex practices during the period in question? Second, how did Gay men in New York negotiate their way through a city that was largely hostile to their existence and make themselves visible to each other? Third, how were Gay men able to appropriate public and private spaces for their own purposes? Fourth, how did the increasingly draconian laws and regulations that followed in the Great Depression's wake affect Gay life? Only by exploring these questions can we even begin to understand how Chauncey was able to construct Gay New York.

Chauncey asserts, quite convincingly, that we have a fundamentally different understanding of sexuality and gender than the generations that he studied. Most peoples' understanding of sexuality is a binary one based on the anatomy of the two sexual actors--homosexual if the actors have the same anatomy and heterosexual if they do not. A person attracted to both sexes fits within the small space left between the poles known as bisexual. In sum, our definition is based solely on sex actors' biology. Though by the end of the nineteenth century, this view of sexuality had made some in roads among the medical community and was beginning gain credence among the middle classes, it was not the dominant view of sexual practice of society as a whole and was not the view of huge swathes of working class men from many backgrounds. The understanding that working class men had of sexual practice, as well as the one that much society had, was a gendered view that fit under the rubrics of normalcy and deviance. This understanding allowed normal men to play the penetrating or fellated role in same sex acts and not have their masculinity questioned. The dominant understanding regarded all men who played of gratifier as feminine. Ours is a world where men and women are gay or straight. Theirs' was a world wherein men were men and women were women, but men were also women because sexual aim took precedence over sexual object. This view allowed for a great deal of sexual contact between men where only one of the actors would be viewed as a homosexual.

Gay New York existed as a city within a city. Words were part of an intricate code that, along with dress and affectation, allowed gay men to recognize each other while remaining largely invisible to the outside world. The dropping of certain words in a conversation; a loud suit with a red tie; bleached hair and tweezed eyebrows; the gait of one's walk or the rhythm of one's speech--all these and many other things played their part in allowing gay men to operate in public surreptitiously when the need to do so arose, but they also allowed straight men (or those who were defined above as normal) to identify gay men within realms that were dominantly straight but allowed for a large amount of intermingling between straight and gay men. Putting aside the person of the fairy--a hyperbolic form of gay affectation that most gay men could not maintain without a the threat of ostracism--the great body of gay men had a tenuous position within the communities lived in and sought partners because communities and private vigilance groups hostilities towards their existence, and law enforcements official virtual outlawing of their sexual behavior. To be gay during this period meant knowing how to behave in ways that signify homosexuality to other gay men (and those interested in affairs with gay men) while having that behavior appear ambiguous enough to those of ill will to avoid censure or worse.

Gay men did not always have to operate through the use of coded behavior. In the worlds of rooming houses, or with the connivance merchants, restaurants and saloons, gay men were able to turn much of what would be regarded as public spheres into primarily gay spaces or at least gay friendly. This was certainly the case with several YMCAs' throughout Manhattan. As Chauncey points out Y's had a legendary aura around them regarding gay activity: "some New Yorkers," he writes, "took rooms at the Sloane House for the weekend, giving fake out-of-town addresses."(156) In the case of the YMCA's security could be bribed, indifferent, or it could be the job of gay men to enforce managements rules that would have the effect of hindering openly homosexual behavior. Since it was not until the 1930's that serving gay people became a business liability, many bars and restaurants were happy to have their business. Being a public space, but in point of fact private property these venues allowed for more overt forms of same sex courtship and interaction. Like the YMCA's and rooming houses Gay men were able to operate here under the sufferance of only unofficial supervision and were therefore only obliged to worry about the community where the venue was located and the proprietors. Although there were occassional police raids, or a proprietor could enlist the help of police forces to make his establishment more or less off limits to openly gay people, these venues would still generally allow for a greater freedom of movement and interaction.

Gay life in New York always had to operate underground, beyond both the official and unofficial radars of society because of the possibility of harassment, arrest and sometimes long prison terms. If the first third of the twentieth century was a time where cunning, code, and great circumspection would have to be employed in order to build an actively gay life, then these tools would become doubly necessary to keep the edifice of gay life from crumbling in the period that immediately followed it. With the end of prohibition putting a huge venue, bars, of gay life under the microscope of a newly vigilant law enforcement community--both the police and a new and militant State Liquor Authority--that was becoming more and more hostile to gay life. New Yorkers of this period, because of the economic calamity all people suffered as part and parcel of the Great Depression, also knew a gender anxiety which they had not know immediately before this because of the massive number of men who were no longer bread winners. Coupling all of these factors together with the election of the dynamic, but moralizing Fiorello La Guardia, in 1933 and the campaign to sanitize the city in time for 1939 World's Fair (especially the areas where the greatest number of gay friendly haunts were) and a situation was created where gay life was severely circumscribed.

At the very least, Chauncey is able to thoroughly dispels the notions that Gay life as we know it today began with the Stonewall revolt and the history of Gay life is one of unimpeded progress. As his narrative shows the history of the oppressed shows, we never live in the best of all possible worlds and very often the past can seem much rosier than the present because it was just that.

An engaging and informative book, September 21, 2007
George Chauncey has written an engaging and informative book that provides entry into another American era's conceptualizations of what we today think of as homosexuality.

Gay New York takes great pains to debunk what Chauncey terms "the three myths" of isolation (gay men led solitary lives prior to Stonewall), invisibility (the gay world was difficult for isolated men to find) and internalization (gay men were self-loathing and universally accepted their denigration by the dominant culture). In addition to gay men's diaries, the book provides a glimpse into a bygone world through personal interviews, meticulous documentation by police investigators and arrest reports, sensationalistic newspaper accounts of police raids, cartoon illustrations from popular magazines, advertisements for drag balls, medical writings and other ingenious and esoteric sources. Combining serious scholarship and humor, the book capably documents the perspective of a culture that defined sexuality and gender roles using criteria that are altogether different from those we use today. In demonstrating the fluidity with which human beings define their own sexual behavior, Chauncey provocatively stirs the postmodern debate between essentialist and social constructionist explanations of sexuality.

In reading Chauncey's book, one appreciates how a culture makes sense of sexual activities. In the days of Gay New York, the terms pansy or fairy were used to define a gender role, what we would today refer to as effeminacy, rather than a sexual orientation. Effeminacy was presumed to indicate that a man was sexually available to other men. In that cultural nosology, the man who had sex with another man was not stigmatized as long as he did not act effeminately and if the homosexual acts in which he engaged were masculine, meaning insertive.

Some sex researchers treat sexual orientations as irreducible traits or markers while many cultures, like the one described in Gay New York, treat gender role behavior as such. Today, many laypeople are willing to accept a sexual orientation as the basic component of human sexuality that can be studied, dissected and for which an eventual etiology will emerge. The incorporation of this newer view into the culture has had interesting political ramifications. On the left, if a homosexual orientation is defined as an intrinsic, genetic trait over which a person has no control, then denying people equal rights because of that trait is akin to racism or discriminating on the basis of a disability. On the right, even if a homosexual orientation is intrinsic, it is considered part of man's baser nature and should be controlled, like a genetic tendency to drink or take drugs. Further on the right, religious and historical beliefs condemn homosexuality as a transgression of rigid, gender roles defined by ancient texts and customs presumed to go back to the dawn of civilization. These latter beliefs totally reject the modern classification of orientations and as in the world of Gay New York, they conflate sexual attraction with gender identity.

In his successful portrayal of a once-thriving same-sex culture, Chauncey makes the point that the oppression that immediately preceded Stonewall was not always the norm. He ably does the job he set out to do in disproving the myths of isolation, invisibility and internalization. He makes the case that "the excoriation of queers served primarily to set the boundaries for how normal men could dress, walk, talk, and relate to women and to each other" and that "the normal world constituted itself and established its boundaries by creating the gay world as a stigmatized other" (pp. 25-26). He argues, somewhat ominously, that an increased visibility of the homosexual culture ultimately led to its own demise. Starting in the 1930's, restrictive and sometimes violent enforcement of laws against gay men evolved in reaction to the openness of their lives. Although the nature of the debate has changed, today we see a backlash in response to the increasing numbers of gay men and women coming out. History teaches us many lessons and Gay New York is highly recommended reading for both the historical facts that it provides as well as for the scientific, political and cultural questions that it raises.

A fabulous read, May 18, 2001
George Chauncey has managed to mix strong research, true history and a flavorful writing approach to produce a box which is both informative and entertaining. It's rich with detail and captures an era gone with immediacy and flair. Chauncey has discovered the gay history we thought existed isn't quite what actually happened.

Excellent!, July 18, 2000
Chauncey's book is extremely well-written, and very informative. It is truly a historical triumph. It unabashedly delves into the complicated constructs that we in the gay community have built around sexuality, and how those constructs play themselves out in the larger society. Chauncey also does an incredible job getting the reader into the mindset of the early 20th Century New Yorker and illustrating how different that mindeset is from our present day thinking. However, it is fascinating to see how much of the thought from that period still influences our thought today, and how it interacts with modern ideas. Congratulations, Mr. Chauncey, on a job well done!

Chauncey sheds light on an important part of U.S. history, December 1, 1997
George Chauncey's study into the gay male world of early 20th century New York is a fascinating, entrancing history. He proves wrong the notion that pre-Stonewall gay male subculture exists. Chauncey's book is an intricate, well-written, and accomplished piece of work, and one can easily see why it has been so lauded with accolades. This book is highly recommended.

A fabulous read, May 18, 2001
George Chauncey has managed to mix strong research, true history and a flavorful writing approach to produce a box which is both informative and entertaining. It's rich with detail and captures an era gone with immediacy and flair. Chauncey has discovered the gay history we thought existed isn't quite what actually happened. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Augusten Burroughs, David Sedaris, and David Rakoff have all produced winning memoirs of their demented, alternately heartrending and sidesplitting late- twentieth-century American childhoods.Now, first-time author Eric Poole joins their ranks with his chronicle of a childhood gone hilariously and heartbreakingly awry in the Midwest of the 1970s.From the age of eight through early adolescence, Poole sought refuge from his obsessive-compulsive mother, sadistic teachers, and sneering schoolyard thugs in the Scotchgarded basement of his family's suburban St. Louis tract house. There, emulating his favorite TV character, Endora from Bewitched, he wrapped himself in a makeshift caftan and cast magical spells in an effort to maintain control over the rapidly shifting ground beneath his feet. But when a series of tragic events tested Eric's longstanding belief that magic can vanquish evil, he began to question the efficacy of his incantations, embarking on a spiritual journey that led him to discover the magic that comes only from within. ... Read more

Reviews

Witty, Flamboyant, Gritty, Innocent, Wondrous, April 1, 2010

Pretty Funny, April 5, 2010

Funny, Delightful Memoir About Growing Up Gay in the 1970s, April 4, 2010

funny, poignant and smart... a wonderful new voice in this genre, June 25, 2010
i had to ration my days of reading this book because i simply did not want it to be over. each chapter is completely new and largely unexpected (with certain, hysterical exceptions), making for a very enjoyable adventure in reading. readers always make comparisons to other writers within a genre, but this one begs no comparison. poole's voice is new, though he does claim to be the secret love child of david sedaris and fran leibowitz, "But oddly taller". i smiled to myself, cried, squirmed, empathized, laughed aloud, and marveled at clever turns of language poole dances through in telling his colorful narrative. this is a truly wonderful book, and as a lover of fun reading, i hope everyone who's ever felt like a misfit picks it up and finds their own magic inside it. mr. poole had better have book two in process... this one was magical!

Great Reading - Funny, Nostalgic, Clever, May 27, 2010
I enjoyed this book tremendously. Eric Poole paints a vivid image of growing up different and learning to cope in his own "magical" way. His characters are funny, heartbreaking and all-too-real. I love David Sedaris, but I am often turned-off by the smugness which creeps into some of his writing. This book was devoid of any smugness, superiority or snarkiness. We're given a glimpse into a world that is often cruel, random and unfair, but ends in bittersweet triumph. I am looking forward to more from the author!

Let Him Entertain You, Let Him Make You Smile..., June 18, 2010
What do you want to be when you grow up? Sound familiar? Maybe it's what you wanted to be as a child that would most heavily shape your future. "Where's My Wand" is the funniest, most charming, and at the same time most poignant look that you may have regarding that concept. A child growing up in St. Louis, where the west is "waaaayyy mid" is challenged by his family, friends, schoolmates, and teachers amid his own struggle to find who he is (or who he thinks he is). Eric Poole's writing is so vivid and visual, that I could actually see the raked shag carpeting and the uncommonly dry kitchen sink, and could put a tone and tenor to each voice from each character...especially his mother...aaahhh yes, his mother. Love at all costs. His obsession with magic and the ills it could hopefully cure is something that would have come in handy for many of us, wouldn't it have? Very "Sedaris" in feeling, but with boatloads more heart! Summer is upon us, so pull up the porch chair, the beach chair, the hammock, or, oh yeah, the bed and treat yourself to a very entertaining read. Once you start, you won't put it down. With characters and storyline this rich...i smell series!!!

Highly Recommend, June 16, 2010
This looked like a fun, summer-type read, and indeed it was - I read it in one day, kind of unable to put it down. It's laugh-out-loud funny, with quirky characters and a hilarious (but what could have easily been gimmicky) conceit: as a child, the author used to emulate Endora from the TV series "Bewitched" in order to survive. But beyond its humor, the book turns out to be unexpectedly poignant. In creating a character who uses his belief in magic to try to navigate his life (with mixed, sometimes mortifying, sometimes sad, almost always funny results), the author gives us a multitude of reasons to root for his success. Eric Poole has staked for himself a new place in the firmament of popular memoirists like David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs. A funny, touching, genuinely unique book.

Overrated, July 12, 2010
I was so excited to get this book after reading all of the terrific reviews. But for me, it was just ok. There were a lot of really funny anecdotes, but the way he keeps going back to the magic theme felt very "high school essay" to me. I would give it 2.5 stars if that were an option.

MaryinHB [...], July 5, 2010
This book is a gem! What a wonderful memoir, much in the spirit of Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris, this book takes you right to the heart of the 70's. I laughed out loud quite a bit while reading this and even thought the author had a tough time of it growing up, his spirit never seemed to diminish. Imagine growing up with an obsessive mother with a cleaning bug that goes beyond normal. Eric learns to cope with this as well as a hearing loss in one ear and figuring out that he is really gay. This was truly a pleasure to read.

ALIENATION, SHAG CARPETING, & WITCHES !!!!!!!!!!, June 20, 2010
In this well written often laugh out loud memoir we find ERIC POOLE sharing facets of life from third grade through parts of high school. Here we are given a heavy dose of his dysFUNctional Baptist family and many colorful characters and adventures. Insightful lessions and and observations are revealed in an almost nostalgic sort of way, and readers who grew up in the 70's will especially find all the kooky references to the time terrific fun! The read is quick, engaging, and I am definitely interested in hearing more about MR. POOLE'S aliening but magical life. I also like his long obsession with Bewitched and its charater Endora, which would inspired him to take his own life into his own hands often with often mixed results. He would then create his own magical rituals to influence his own life, and to witness him grow up and to percieves his doings is at times like watching him from the spirit world blossom, while you root for him all the way. Also, how his consciousness changes over time and his relationship and understanding of God is interesting as well. I highly recommend WHERE'S MY WAND? - ONE BOY'S MAGICAL TRIUMPH OVER ALIENATION AND SHAG CARPETING for the humor, the moving drama (yes, there's some of that too), but its the graceful ease in which ERIC"S enchanted life is wonderfully spun to us that is so appealing. I want to hear more from MR. POOLE and his boyhood triumps, troubles, maybe even all about his first kiss, - which you know is going to have a Bee Gees soundtrack, and that fabulous Farrah Fawcett poster hovering overhead!!!! ENJOY EVERYONE !!!!! ... Read more

Editorial Review

Reviews

Yay for Seal Press and Susan Stryker!, October 15, 2009
Just when it seems like more and more publishers are publishing fewer and fewer books, and even less and less queer titles, Seal Press persists---thank goodness!!

Having had the chance on a few occasions to hear Stryker speak at various events, and being familiar with other work of hers, I wasn't surprised by her ability to engage me as a reader, or by the overall readability of Transgender History.

True, when you cram "history" (trans or not) into 153 pages, there are several things that you can focus on, and many other things you cannot. But, as primer/introductory text, Transgender History has a lot to offer.

People will certainly be drawn to the first chapter, "An Introduction to Transgender Terms and Concepts." While I am much more hesitant to provide my students with readings that present a list of terms and definitions (preferring instead that they encounter them in context, often in contradictory contexts that reveal their nuances), a general reading public will certainly appreciate the way in which Stryker is able to succinctly give them a working understanding of so many terms.

The second chapter, "A Hundred Years of Transgender History" is an amazing condensation of a lot of information. I have previously encountered much of the information that Stryker presents, but to have it all gathered here and in less than thirty pages is a feat! I particularly appreciated Stryker's attention to the ways in which medical science (and legislation over it) has increasingly played a central role in our everyday lives.

Chapter 4, "The Difficult Decades" highlights Transgender History's usefulness for contemporary Women's Studies and Gender Studies courses.

Most importantly, throughout the book there is a strong focus on critically analyzing the role of state policies and institutions in controlling those who go against social norms. At times, these moments may be too subtle for novice readers, but the book definitely has a lot to offer.

Well done!, January 8, 2009
Written well for general information as well as utilizing it in the classroom. It is a very good resource for basic understanding. Wish that they had printed the material in a larger print format for the book.

Support transgender liberation!, October 29, 2009
For readers interested in contemporary transgender history in the United States, this short and sweet book is an excellent introduction to the topic, covering all of the major political struggles, victories, backlash, and debates from the years just following World War II to the present day. In this book, you'll learn about important but little known transgender protests such as the riots outside Cooper's Donuts in LA in 1959, Dewey's lunch counter in Philadelphia in 1965, and the Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco in 1966, as well as the famous Stonewall Riots of 1968. Along the way, we meet transgender activists like Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, Leslie Feinberg, Dean Spade, Imani Henry, Riki Wilchins, Lou Sullivan, Kate Bornstein, Beth Elliott, and many others, and political organizations like S.T.A.R., Transexual Menace, and the Queens' Liberation Front. In addition, Susan Stryker explores the transgender movement's relationship to feminism and gay and lesbian activism, discussing subjects like feminist transphobia amongst second-wave feminists, third-wave feminist inclusion, the impact of queer theory on the transgender movement, and the genderqueer phenomenon. Thank you Susan Stryker for this wonderful celebration of transgender history. It was both a joy to read and very educational! ... Read more

Editorial Review

When lives are dominated by hunger, what becomes of love? When assaulted by daily acts of violence and untimely death, what happens to trust? Set in the lands of Northeast Brazil,this is an account of the everyday experience of scarcity, sickness and death that centres on the lives of the women and children of a hillside "favela". Bringing her readers to the impoverished slopes above the modern plantation town of Bom Jesus de Mata, where she has worked on and off for 25 years, the author follows three generations of shantytown womenas they struggle to survive through hard work, cunning and triage. It is a story of class relations told at the most basic level of bodies, emotions, desires and needs. Most disturbing - and controversial - is her finding that mother love,as conventionally understood, is something of a bourgeois myth, a luxury for those who can reasonably expect, as these women cannot, that their infants will live. The author also wrote "Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland". ... Read more

Reviews

Not for the faint of heart, October 9, 2002
Scheper-Hughes's book is certainly the most impacting book I have read in months. I cannot call it entertaining but it is riveting in presenting a mind-boggling situation of abject poverty in Northeastern Brazil with its consequent infant and child mortality and impacts on the family structure.

Death Without Weeping is a very original, very relevant, and carefully written book although not perfect. The book is the result of extensive field research by Dr. Scheper-Hughes, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley but nevertheles very readable. I could understand and enjoy most of it without having had extensive training in Anthropology.

The author does a wonderful job in translating Alto do Cruzeiro reality into something the average American can understand. This "translation" certainly adds a bias but is still indispensable in my opinion. I consider that the author's religious beliefs strongly affected the outcome of the book and that I think could have been avoided.

I understand that the author has it's ethics and wouldn't reveal in the text the actual location name for Bom Jesus da Mata. I'm not tied by the same ethics so I can tell it: Bom Jesus da Mata is actually Timbauba, a 60,000 inhabitants town on the outskirts of Recife. The book subtitle, "The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil" couldn't be worse. Timbauba is not Brazil. It has its own very specific problems and to read the book without understanding the great diversity among Brazil's regions would be very unfair to the country. Even in a local scale, Alto do Cruzeiro is not Timabuba and Timbauba is not Pernambuco. If you read the book don't rule out the possibility of going down to Brazil and having a wonderful time there. Tourism is a very good way of alleviating if not solving the problems presented in the book.

I have read now dozens of books written in English by the so-called Brazilianists who most of the times are not Brazilians themselves. Most of the books have the same problem of Death Without Weeping: there's a total sloppiness in spelling the Portuguese words. I can't believe UC Berkeley couldn't hire a Brazilian graduate student to proofread the originals. Moreover, the Geraldo Vandre quote on the very first page of the book, which gives the book its name was completely fabricated. Disparada is a great song and for writing songs such as "Disparada" and "Para Nao Dizer Que Nao Falei Das Flores", Geraldo Vandre was captured and tortured by the military dictatorship in Brazil. He was later released but severely braindamaged. However, the verses Scheper-Hughes quoted do not exist in "Disparada".

I was shocked to learn on the book's Epilogue who Seu Jacques, whom the book is dedicated to, was. But this suspense I'm not going to break.

Leonardo Alves - Houghton, MI - October 2002

Nancy Scheper-Hughes takes a critical-interpretive approach., November 10, 1999
Nancy Scheper-Hughes' book "Death Without Weeping" is an outstanding piece of a true anthropological approach to studying a difficult concept: Mothers in Brazil do not mourn for dead infants. Coming from America, it seems difficult to understand the lack of innate "Mother Love." Scheper-Hughes looks at both the political-economic problems in Brazil as a coutry as well as the beliefs and meanings that mothers living in a Shantytown place on their infants (dead or alive). By looking at records, talking to officials, and researching the history of Brazil, Nancy Scheper-Hughes is able to understand how the state of the political and econimic system in Brazil is partially responsible for the horrible deaths and indifferent mothers living in these shantytowns. Alternatively she has been able to get a true understanding of what meanings these women place on their infants death. By looking at both sides, the way Scheper-Hughes has done, we can obtain a better understanding of the true problem and how the people deal with it. Although Nancy Scheper-Hughes does not offer solutions in this book, she tells all of the clues needed to find a solution. Great Book!

Scheper-Hughes At Her Very Best, May 21, 2001
I have seen death without weeping. The destiny of the Northeast is death. Cattle they kill, But to the people they do something worse. --Geraldo Vandre, Disparada

"Death Without Weeping: Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil" is a brilliant anthropological and sociological depiction of life in the Nordeste region of Brazil. In Death Without Weeping, Scheper-Hughes carefully analyzes the Mother-Child relationship in a region of Brazil with the highest infant mortality rate in Latin America. Centered in the village of Alto do Cruziero, Scheper-Hughes continues to work with the community she had first joined as a Peace Corps volunteer decades before. Rekindling her relationship with the villagers and the land, she takes a new perspective to study the emotional and physical strain on a region where every life is touched with the pain of infant mortality. She examines the frightening reality of a place where mothers have absolutely no safety net and cannot protect their children from the disease, hunger, and destitute living conditions.

Scheper-Hughes further discusses the role of international corporations and their influence (usually negative) in the Nordeste region.

Death Without Weeping is absolutely brilliant. Scheper-Hughes is at her finest, and her work is impeccable. This is one of the finest works of sociology and anthropology I have read.

Classic Modern Ethnography, April 26, 2005
Scheper-Hughes not only crafts a thorough, complex ethnography, but she takes a risk by putting a piece of herself into it as well. Here is the introduction I wrote for a term paper about this book:

Anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes covers rough territory in Death Without Weeping, an ethnography about sugar cane workers in Northeastern Brazil. In chapters eight and nine she discusses the concepts of maternity and infanticide in a manner that dissolves their seemingly diametric natures and exposes an enigma of conflict and confluence inherent in their layered reality. But how can we contrast our established notions of maternity and infanticide with Scheper-Hughes' statements about them in a context that is emically true to the population her research is based on? Some things about maternity might seem clear: positive maternity encompasses nurturance and doting love, while negative maternity suggests neglect and even murder; yet Scheper-Hughes brings into question commonly held notions about the biological necessities and cultural expectations of maternity that reveal contradictions, blind alleys, and misleading parochial assumptions. This ethnography about the sugarcane workers of the Alto do Cruzeiro slum in the town of Bom Jesus, Brazil causes us to re-evaluate our understanding of maternity in the face of established cultural and biological contexts, and invites a more detailed, elemental, philosophical gaze. The observations made in Death Without Weeping force us to retreat in search of a neutral ground free from the biases we may hold about `American' or `Brazilian' maternity, and abandon our fear of naivety by asking, what in fact is maternity, and what do we know about it?

A gripping book, a masterful ethnography.

Is mother-infant bonding natural?, February 6, 2010
In this brilliant ethnographic work, Nancy Scheper-Hughes situates us in a favela of Brazil's northeastern region. It is a world of abject poverty, exploitative economic relations, and unspoken racial divisions. While most ostensibly an inquiry into the region's exceptionally high infant mortality rate, the book is - in a broader sense - a critical analysis of the nature of motherhood.

The unlikely heroines of the story are the women who 'overproduce' children, leave them unnamed until age two, and withhold care and affection from those who seem unlikely to survive. One cannot help but find their actions reprehensible. One also cannot help but empathize with their incredibly difficult lives and find inspiration in their resilience.

This book is heartbreaking and will make you see the world in a new light.

Already a classic of committed scholarship., January 21, 1999
"Death Without Weeping" is perhaps the most profound & moving academic work I know from this decade, & contributes brilliantly to debates on many important current issues. It sets an extremely high standard of in-depth research, theoretical insight, political commitment and compassion.

a gripping ethnography, December 3, 2005
Giving birth to a healthy human being and watching it grow into personhood is something most Americans take for granted. Many cultures the world over see the concepts of `personhood' and `human-ness' very differently than we view them here in the U.S. Americans would likely see granting responsibility to a neonate his/her own will to live or die as a form of abuse. This culture-bound perspective lies in stark contrast to societies that grant (often out of economic necessity) the newborn the agency to determine for his/herself the right to live or die.

The book Death Without Weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes and the article "When Does Life Begin?" by Lynn Morgan explore the ideas of `human-ness' and `personhood' from two different perspectives. The examination of both works leaves me to ponder the stark contrast between my own culture and that of the Alto de Cruziero, as described by Hughes, while begging the question of whether babies of the Alto are pre-social persons.

Lynn Morgan's article attempts to highlight the oftentimes subtle and arbitrary distinction between `human' and `person.' She argues that humans are biological beings while persons are humans that have been socialized into their culture. By Morgan's definition, a person has a socially recognized moral status and by virtue of certain rites of passage, assumes rights and responsibilities in society. Additionally she describes a pre-social person as a living being that must endure said rituals and steps to become a person. Unlike Morgan's cross-cultural survey, Hughes describes one society, the poverty-stricken region of the Alto do Cuiziero. The women of the Alto face an astonishingly high infant mortality rate. Perhaps that economic-based reality figures prominently in the notion that, unlike here in the U.S., the neonates are seen as pre-social persons with the right (and responsibility) to determine whether they will live or die.
In the minds of Alto parents, the neonates are born into the world having already made the decision whether or not to live. Any weak or otherwise unhealthy baby is said to have, "Come into the world with an aversion to life" (Hughes: 368). The weak or ill babies are "too under demanding, too willing, and too likely to die" (Hughes: 386). Says one Alto mother; " I think that if they were always weak, they wouldn't be able to defend themselves in life. So it is really better to let the weak ones die." (Hughes: 369). Hughes suggests that babies are born knowing that their life will be difficult, even if they survive the first year or so when they are finally seen as humans. Says another mother of the Alto, " If she died, it was because she herself, on seeing what was ahead, what was in store for her, she decided to die." (Hughes: 370).
Perhaps the babies are presumed to know that it will be easier on their families if they die early on. Since the parents face staggering poverty and blight, it is clear that certain economic factors control the allocation of love as a resource. A compelling reality exists for all mothers in the poor shantytown according to Nancy Hughes: "part of learning to mother on the Alto includes knowing when to let go of a child who shows that he wants to die." (Hughes: 364). Hughes clearly believes that the relationship between mother and child in the Alto is based largely on a culture of poverty. She addresses the concept of "Mother Love" as being learned behavior--and not biological instinct- that enables the women of the Alto to cope with the inevitable deaths of many of their young.
It is difficult to definitively answer the question of whether babies are `person' or `human' because different cultures view and define various social statuses differently. Lynn Morgan states: "the infant must `prove' itself worthy of personhood; first by managing to survive, then by exhibiting the vigor and health of one destined to become a functioning member of the community. If it survives and thrives, it is ready to pass through the social birth canal, to be ceremoniously welcomed as a person into the community." Other than a physical evaluation upon their birth, the babies of the Alto do not have the luxury of proving their survivability to their parents. If seen as not healthy or strong enough, they do not receive the resources of care necessary to survive. Morgan also states: "Social birth gives the neonate a moral status and binds it securely to a social community." The so-called social birth of Alto babies occurs simultaneously with their biological birth. Unlike in the U.S., they are pre-social persons born with the knowledge and the agency to decide if they live or die.

Not a great read, April 20, 1999
Although this book is to be praised as a fine piece of scholarship and field work, I did not enjoy reading it that much. Here I will jump off into pure personal opinion. I think the author interceded way too much between the reader and what she observed in shantytown life in northeast Brazil, interpreting things for the reader from start to finish. I feel the reason she did so is because she was afraid to simply tell the reader what she observed, because she felt there were 999 chances out of a thousand that the reader would "not understand". Mostly the author "interpreted" without even telling the reader what the facts were which she was interpreting. It was obvious that the author had seen hundreds of stories of what a normal observer would call child neglect to the point of where the child died, yet it was like she was these people's mother and couldn't bear the thought of what she had seen as being, in some else's eyes, perhaps akin to murder. I wish she had given us the facts, and then she could have given us her opinion, while letting the reader make up their own mind. The real story of a culture where mothers starve their children to death every day would be fascinating, and then we could decide whether we wanted to forgive them or interpret the situation as does the auther. I'm not saying she's wrong, but she simply didn't give us the "real story", ie, all the facts. She may well be right, but the facts would be fascinating.

Michael Chesser

captivating account of life in Brazil, September 22, 1998
Nancy Scheper-Hughes book "Death without Weeping" is an excellent anthropological account of life and survival in modern day Brazil. This book is definitely worthwhile. As a newcomer to Latin American studies or as a research tool to those well studied in this area, this book offers endless amounts of information. The facts are well coupled with excellent discussions involving specific individuals. I would absolutely recommend this book!!!!

Too many errors, factual, historical, literary..., September 8, 2007
It's hard to take this work seriously when it's so full of errors. The author became a self-proclaimed Brazilianist overnight and it shows. A good ethnography requires more than what went into this work, although it's an interesting topic and a great job of anthropological showboating. ... Read more

Editorial Review

The mother of Matthew Shepard shares her story about her son's death and the choice she made to become an international gay rights activist

Today, the name Matthew Shepard is synonymous with gay rights, but before his grisly murder in 1998, Matthew was simply Judy Shepard's son. For the first time in book form, Judy Shepard speaks about her loss, sharing memories of Matthew, their life as a typical American family, and the pivotal event in the small college town that changed everything.

The Meaning of Matthew follows the Shepard family in the days immediately after the crime, when Judy and her husband traveled to see their incapacitated son, kept alive by life support machines; how the Shepards learned of the incredible response from strangers all across America who held candlelit vigils and memorial services for their child; and finally, how they struggled to navigate the legal system as Matthew's murderers were on trial. Heart-wrenchingly honest, Judy Shepard confides with readers about how she handled the crippling loss of her child, why she became a gay rights activist, and the challenges and rewards of raising a gay child in America today.

The Meaning of Matthew not only captures the historical significance and complicated civil rights issues surrounding one young man's life and death, but it also chronicles one ordinary woman's struggle to cope with the unthinkable. ... Read more

Reviews

From humble beginnings....., September 5, 2009
... to a world known icon, Judy Shepard has become synonymous with words like activist, equal rights, and legacy. There are many of us who idolize this woman, and even, dare I say, put her on a pedestal for her endless work in this area. However, the Judy Shepard in her new book, "The Meaning of Matthew" My Son's Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed", is a simple mother, telling the wonderful story of her son's life, and the journeyhis death set her on afterwards.

One of the marvelous surprises in this book of surprises is Judy's humbleness and straightforwardness. Coming from the west, growing up in Wyoming herself, Judy has an understanding of the land and the people there that permeates this wonderful book. She met and married her husband Dennis, and then proceeded to have Matthew, which turned out to be a complicated birth and early few weeks of life. Throughout this book, Judy shares little stories and insights into Matthew's character that truly humanize this now civil rights icon. This is a mother, writing about her son, with love.

But it's honest. Judy doesn't hold back, when recounting her first suspicions about her son's homosexuality, when recounting some of his faults and foibles, and her own doubts as a mother. Somehow, throughout the book, she manages to maintain her composure, even when getting to the fateful, horrible nights and lingering days while Matthew barely clung to life. Read those chapters with Kleenex nearby. Even the hardest hearted of us will be fighting back tears.

However, I must say, I don't feel for a second that Judy wants us to feel sorry for her, or slip into a maudlin remembrance of her son. I truly believe, as the book wraps up for us, that she is ultimately inspiring us to action. This book serves as a clarion call for those who wish for others to do the difficult work of equal rights to wake up and get involved; even in little ways, the littlest act can and does make a difference.

From humble beginnings as a wife and mother, to world known activist, you leave the book admiring her and her family for the work they've done to make this world as better place for everyone. But in reality, this marvelous read is a mother's memories of her son, and this book serves as a monument to this boy, whom the country never met, but now knows well.

Thank you Judy.

UNBELIEVABLY MOVING AND BEAUTIFUL, September 7, 2009
What an incredible (true) story about all of us in the U.S.A. and around the world, of a beautiful (inwardly and outwardly) young AMERICAN man, and his most remarkable mother! One of the most inspiring books I have ever read. If Congress does not again get around to putting into law The Matthew Sheppard Hate Crimes Bill, then we remain, as a country, deeply ashamed, as hatred still trumps love and acceptance of ALL Americans.

"All of Us are Part of the Same Family: Humanity", September 11, 2009
"The Meaning of Matthew" by Judy Shepard sheds light on the life of Matt, killed in Laramie, Wyoming, murdered by two men for no other reason than a botched robbery ($20.00) and a gay victim.

Shepard, the mother of Matt, strives throughout the book to keep her emotions in check, to tell the story of Matt before his murder, the son she loved. Matt was funny, kind, and open to the wonders of the world. Matt became depressed, angry, alcoholic, and confused as he encountered a world that did not accept him as a gay man.

The murder and subsequent trial sparked protests against hate crimes. Yet there were also those who defamed the victim, using his funeral as a place to spew their messages of hate, that Matt would rot in hell, that Matt was the devil's spawn. The "Reverend" Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church used the funeral and the trial to promote their hate-mongering, leaving the grieving family in more pain.

Judy Shepard has become a spokesperson for the LGBT community. This book will help to enlighten those who wish to learn more about how to bring civility into a dark world. I would have liked to feel more connected to the writer, but I understand her need to control her emotions, to keep a grip over the narrative, because how else can a parent move on when a child has been tortured and murdered?

"The Laramie Project" is also the story of Matt, with a far deeper emotional impact. I recommend Shepard's book for the facts and the understanding of a family under assault by the press and those who feel they have a duty to tell others how to live.

blessings for the memory of matthew shephard, September 12, 2009
I wish to commend Judy Shephard very highly for her courage and strength to keep the memory of Matthew Shephard alive. To talk and write about him is the best way to make sure he is never forgotten or lost in the ongoing shuffle of daily tragedies. While an undergraduate at Brooklyn College, I was made aware of Matthew because the college was having a play about his tragic death.
I wrote two papers about him, his life, his senseless death, the need for all people to be accepted for who they are and not what someone else wants them to be.
i am a teacher of poetry now, at Brooklyn College. I will recommend this book to my students.
I will be proud to do so.
irene brodsky
Teacher of Poetry and
Author of Poetry Unplugged (Outskirts Press)

A World Transformed, September 18, 2009
He was very small, looked like he was 13 or 14, and when 18 year old Aaron Kreifels saw his body propped up against a fence, his mountain bike skidded across the road for it looked like a scarecrow, a "Halloween guy," Kreifels remembered. A tiny body, but soaked in blood, most of it under his head. By this time Matthew Shepard had been hung on that fence for nearly eighteen hours, his lungs gradually pooling with blood. How any mother could cope with the Laramie police findings I don't know, but it was up to Judy Shepard to take it all in without fainting, and she has written a book to try to find the meaning of Matthew--the meaning of his death, but also the meaning of his life, how did this all come to happen.

It is a disturbing and chilling account, but it's human. We come to wonder about the killers and their girlfriends and their families, and how drugs and poverty have chipped away at their moral sense. One of the killers robbed a Keuntucky Fried Chicken of $2,500.00 (and "some desserts," adds Mrs. Shepard) and hid away in Florida to avoid the heat, then sneaked back when he thought it would be OK. Judy Shepard isn't what you'd call a natural writer, but she has given us something of a different order, the thoughts and feelings of a person devastated, and on top of it a person strong enough to pick up the pieces and do something that will mean something.

There's always a through-line of something resembling guilt giving her narrative an edge of real feeling and conflicting pressures. The book opens up that way, herself living with her husband in the Middle East--so far away from Laramie that it takes her days to get back to her son's bedside. There was the puzzling and horrifying earlier incident when Matt was assaulted by several men in North Africa--again she asks herself, where was she? Matt was complicated, too, and like a bird he couldn't be contained by parental worry. He had to do what he wanted to do, and he had to go where he wanted to go. In that one way, he was just like his mother.

Quietly powerful page-turner, September 27, 2009
A factual account of Matthew Shepard's life and murder, his mother Judy fills in many blanks and clarifies common misunderstandings about Matt's life, death, and the trial of his murderers. Like Beth Loffreda's poetic Losing Matt Shepard, this is a quiet story whose power builds with page after page of factual detail while avoiding the pitfall of attributing some greater meaning. Though Judy Shepard has worked for a decade to make something good out of a terrible tragedy, ultimately we are faced with the inevitable fact that there was no 'sense' in Matt's senseless death. Shepard sidesteps any attempt to make her son's brutal murder meaningful, despite the misleading title of this memoir. Ultimately the meaning of Matt's death is what we do after it; not why it happened in the first place--something we are unlikely to ever fully know. Highly recommended.

A powerful book!, September 4, 2009
What a truly powerful book. I recommend this to everyone to read. I learned a lot of things I never knew or heard about this tragic event. It was really eye opening, and I am thinking about buying another copy to give to my mother to read. Mrs. Shepard provides a really objective view to the events and tells Matthew's story from her eyes.

The private and public family, September 19, 2009
There is only one person who could write the definitive book about Matthew Shepard...his life and his death...and that person is his mother, Judy. Most of us know the outer details of Matt's end, but Judy exposes the color of her son's life...the brilliant hues of his personality and his great warmth as a young man on the verge of becoming an adult. I think many of us have been waiting for this book for a long time.

What strikes me most about Judy Shepard is that her account is not simply her own. This is a book about her family. She relates the ups and downs of emotions she shared with her husband Dennis about Matt not only through his death, but as importantly, through his life. It's a narrative about caring and protecting her younger son, Logan, as he struggled with the loss of his older brother. Indeed, one of the most powerful parts of the book is Dennis's address to the courtroom. If that doesn't make you cry, nothing will.

Judy does not suffer fools gladly...in this case, the Reverend Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, whose group demonstrates the antithesis of love, or the media at large, who were and are much more interested in the drama of a story than in caring about the Shepard family. Judy Shepard may have some doubts about her own strengths from time to time but her instincts are powerfully correct.

"The Meaning of Matthew" rekindled my interest in Matthew Shepard, but now I know more about him, personally, than I ever did. I thank Judy for this evenly-presented tribute to Matt. We're all the better for his life and for her support.

A Must Read Book, September 29, 2009
I first heard about Matthew Shepard when a certain congresswomen said this case was just a hoax. I then ordered this book. This book should be required reading for all High School students and especially a certain congresswomen. Judy tells it all like it was and is still. The agony she and the family went through is all here. Her story even brought tears to me. This murder was so senseless and it is all here, the laughter, the tears, the joy and the sadness. Thanks Judy for opening my eyes.

Stunning and very touching, September 27, 2009
This is a remarkable book. Its honesty is stunning and captivates your soul. It is incomprehensible that anyone could harm such a lovable young man or even murder him so viciously. This crime was a low watermark for humanity. You have to pause reading at times because the reality of this book is overwhelming and you feel like all the beasts of the forest creep forth, the young lions roar for their pray, the ghastly ghosts walk abroad in the dark and the rulers of darkness domineer at pleasure - at times.

If you want to know about the state of a countries society just boldly ask the question:
How do you treat gay people in your country - and the weakest, and all those who are different from what is common in your country?

This book shows once more that human rights are not a given. You have to fight for them. This struggle is not a choice, - neither is being gay.

We love you Matthew! ... Read more

Editorial Review

Updated Edition With a New PrefaceLila Abu-Lughod lived with a community of Bedouins in the Western Desert of Egypt for nearly two years, studying gender relations and the oral lyric poetry through which women and young men express personal feelings. The poems are haunting, the evocation of emotional life vivid. But her analysis also reveals how deeply implicated poetry and sentiment are in the play of power and the maintenance of a system of social hierarchy. What begins as a puzzle about a single poetic genre becomes a reflection on the politics of sentiment and the relationship between ideology and human experience. ... Read more

Reviews

Veiled Sentiments, June 1, 2000
This book is one of the best ethnographies I've come across. The author's ability to see beyond the stereotypes and catch-phrases surrounding "veiled" women is astounding.

Abu-Lughod is capable of insight I believe dozens of modern anthropologists and social scientists have yet to discover...and her direct look at the way that power is manifested through alternative forms and agendas is matchless. In particular, her dicussion of the way in which women's modes of power work outside of the more studied realms reveals that resistance has a history and discourse all its own.

This book is definitely an excellent answer to those who want to view Islamic women as voiceless. And though the author attempts to show aspects of silence and veiling as manifestations of cultural distinction and identity, she is also quick to note in later chapters that it is Western influences that manage to increasingly isolate the veiled woman and reduce her realm of influence.

Provacative and intense, Abu-Lughod also has a touch of the poet in her, and this book reads easily. She wraps each intellectual argument in a thick blanket of anecdote and conversation, helping the reader create his/her own conclusions.

Evocative ethnography, May 16, 2003
I agree with the other reviewers. It was the best ethnography I can remember reading. What struck a chord with me was her description and explanation of the women's submission to the men, that the submissiveness was valuable only when it was voluntarily given. The idea of women being submissive to men is not only Islamic, but exists also in Christianity.

A Tool for Understanding, January 3, 2003
"Veiled Sentiments" is academic. It is the outcome of the author's living in a Bedouin community in northern Egypt (the Western Desert) for two years, a feat of no mean proportions.

Lila Abu-Lughod came to a deep understanding of such aspects of the culture as blood ties, veiling and poetry not only because of her talent and training but also because she has ties to that culture. She calls academics like herself "halfies" because they belong both "inside and outside the communities they write about." She realizes that such a situation benefits them in terms of gathering knowledge within close cultures.

The veiling of women (or rather women's veiling of themselves) is an important topic because of recent events including world politics and of the ongoing research in feminism. It is also important because it is so often misunderstood and so difficult to understand even when it is explained.

After reading Abu-Lughod's renowned (in the world of academics) book, "Veiled Sentiments," I think I have a better handle on veiling than I ever would have had otherwise. It was not easy to absorb the concepts that surround it. That it took � of a 315 page book to do it (a conservative estimate) is a testament to the intricacies of and the psychological motivations behind this cultural /religious practice.

Learning more about veiling alone made this study one well worth reading. But the surprise for both the reader, and-as explained by Ms. Abu-Lughod-the author herself is the discovery of this culture's use of poetry. To take it one step further, the insight into how societies in general (at least ours and that of the Bedouins) similarly use their poetry and relate to it.

Abu-Lughod finds that poetry is used somewhat differently among women in the Awlad ` Ali tribes than it is used by men. Because I am writing my own book of poetry called "Skyscapes: A Woman's View," I was especially interested in this aspect of "Sentiments;" it also was, by the author's own admission, an amazing and important cultural discovery. A group of women in China have their own secret language apart from the men; now this anthropologist brings to our attention how the poetry and veiling customs of these women reveal their emotions and are rooted in the traditions of a society in which they live quite separately from men.

Though this book is not meant for mainstream readers, I hope that many who have no ties to anthropology will make an effort to read it. I believe that women will find it especially interesting but men will also find pertinent information for today's political climate within its pages. No amount of travel could impart the depth of understanding of this culture, and-by extension-similar cultures that this book does.

(Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of "This is the Place..." )

Tremendous Insight, September 24, 2006
Lila Abu Lughod, an Arab American woman, lived among the Awlad Ali tribes of the North West of Egypt for two years. Veiled Sentiments is the book she wrote on the lives and poetry of Awlad Ali. Abu Lughod field work was clearly not carried out from a "superior" stance; she sympathized with her subjects and dealt with them as equal human beings rather than inferior specimen or cultures. Abu Lughod attitude, intelligence, training and tremendous analystical ability helped her in developing great insight and understanding of this fascinating culture.

Abu Lughod analysis of concepts such as "hishma" was truly incisive and shed a great deal of light on the nature of modesty between women and men and amongst men and women. The analysis seems to explain behaviors and norms witnessed elsewhere in Egypt and indeed other parts of the Middle East.

An important thesis of Abu Lughod is that the Awlad Ali people often communicated in very conservative and modest way directly through words; they only said what was proper and fitted the norms. Yet a second mode of communication far more true and expressive was found in their little songs or poems.

Abu Lughod discussed gender relation amongst Awlad Ali at length and the relationship between women and the families of their husbands and the society at large. I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it. For an excellent work on veiling and gender issues, I would recommend Leila Ahmed's Women & Gender in Islam.

Excellent analysis of social function of 1 culture's poetry, July 9, 1998
Abu-Lughod looks at the role poetry plays in the lives of women in Bedouin society, as an alternative to the poetic tradition of the men and a way to communicate and validate experiences outside the morality imposed by the male dominated culture. What's most fascinating for me as a student of poetry is the implicit definition of poetry that Abu-Lughod gives us along the way--a poetry defined, as Sir Philip Sidney once argued, not by its form but by the role it plays in the culture.

a good read, October 13, 2002
the book is written by an american woman with mideastern roots -- she provides great insight into the traditionals of the bedouin and arab worlds. I read this before I went to Egypt and it provided great foundation for understanding the culture of the town and village. I like her writing style -- she makes anthopological analysis interesting by explaining in the context of her interactions with the bedouins.

Very important book, May 19, 2000
This book presents a fascinating and moving description of Beduin life in Egypt. The author presents an extremely thoughtful analysis of Beduin codes of honor, elements of which I suspect pervade much of more general Arabic society. This is one of the most insightful books on Arabic culture that I have ever found.

The Meaning of the Craft of Ethnography, June 4, 2007


What is most interesting about this book -- which centers on the poetry of the Bedouin tribe of Awlad Ali -- is not the poetry per se, but that it gives an insider's view of the craft of Ethnography. It shows, through the eyes of a skilled ethnographer, and almost by indirection and in reverse order, how meaning is attached to cultures by the people who live in them.

By peeling back the skin of the Awlad Ali culture - one of the nomadic tribes that once hovered around the edge of the Western Egyptian Desert -- we learn, not just "the ways" of this and similar Nomadic tribes, but more generally, the steps needed to attach meaning to the onion called culture. This analysis reveals, layer-by-layer, the structure and texture of the Awlad Ali worldview. It also reveals the various ideologies that supported its construction.

The Awlad Ali tribe is a society based on blood kinship, on honor, and on a kind of fierce tribal autonomy and independence. And however abstract these categories may seem, and however much they may seem settled at birth, they are in fact constantly being re-negotiated in the tribe's everyday efforts to survive: "lived deeds" in the Awlad Ali culture always trump ascribed status and words. The culture has especially derogatory names and references to those who talk, but fail to act.

Moreover, cultural meaning and societal rules remain close to the ground: that is, closely attached to survival needs. Ascribed status - that is patrilineal genealogy, maleness, etc. definitely have a pride of place in the culture, but these do not settle the matter of status once and for all: What one does with these is the final arbiter of ones position and status within the tribe.

As an American peeping into another culture, what I learned in a somewhat painfully indirect way is that most of rest of the world - even primitive tribes -- still speak and relate to each other in the language of humanity: poetry, songs, prayer, proverbs, folklore, tales, myths, etc. To them, these are not mere cultural trinkets, ornamentations and affectations, to be tossed about during holidays, or to be commercialized and then tossed aside, or just the colorful tools used to promote a particular kind of politics or political organization, but they are the real meat of human discourse. They serve as the actual conduits through which deep human feelings are conveyed and transmitted.

As a backdrop to our own culture, there are at least two lessons to be learned (indirectly and in relief) from this book:

(1) That it is possible to construct a cultural worldview (a complete cosmology of meaning) entirely without the need for a category called "race" or without reference to the idea of a "religion." The author, who was Christian and a partly-white female, lived in the home of the tribe she was studying for two years, which was nominally Muslim, but with all of the many intersecting categories of meaning: race and religion, were never mentioned to her or ever played a role in tribal discourse.

(2) That we Americans live in a social world that is bereft of normal meaningful human attachments and discourse. In comparison to the Awlad Ali tribe, we live in a world of greatly diminished humanity in which racism, acquisition of things, commodification and consumerization of those things, rationalizations and political spin, false piety, rationing of intangibles qualities, knee-jerk bipartisanism, sublimated hatred, and artistic shallowness, are substitutes for real meaning.

Is this all just an inevitable part of modernity? It is difficult to know, but we must be grateful to this author for showing us with great skill that there are other images of, and paths to meaningfulness.

Ten Stars

Enigma brought to light, and neutrally construed., February 7, 2000
Life is about discourses; public and private discourses are the marrow of life in this Badouin community. Expressions of existance are beyond mere bittersweet croaks and the analogy of a pig and dog in this part of the Western Egyptian desert work at their best. This work is about the Awlad Ali tribe's struggle to uphold 'honor'(`agl) and 'modesty'(hashaam) using the explicitly elaborate mechanism of poetry, Bedouin style. I re-evaluated my view of life in a traditional Muslim community. People at a lower level of the tribal hierarchy (even women) can, and sometimes do, rebel and instead of provoking the elder's wrath, it sends a message, "you are not being a good leader." ... Read more

Editorial Review

In Telling Memories Among Southern Women, Susan Tucker presents a revealing collection of oral-history narratives that explore the complex, sometimes enigmatic bond between black female domestic workers and their white employers from the turn of the twentieth century to the civil rights revolution of the 1960's.Based on interviews with forty-two women of both races from the Deep South, these narratives express the full range of human emotions and successfully convey the ties that united-and the tensions and conflicts that separated-these two mutually dependent groups of women. ... Read more

Reviews

Some stories behind The Help, March 23, 2010
While reading The Help I found myself wondering what Kathryn Stockett was using as a foundation. Yes, she'd lived in Jackson, MS (I spent my first two years of undergrad in Jackson '65-'67) and yes, The Help was fiction...but what else was there? I was thrilled to read in the acknowledgments "Thank you to Susan Tucker, author of the book Telling Memories Among Southern Women, whose beautiful oral accounts of domestics and white employers took me back to a time and place that is long gone". I immediately went in search of this book. I can tell you it was next to impossible to find the the copies available were priced reflecting the supply and demand, I think the cheapest one I could find was around $90. Fortunately I was able to find a hard-backed copy through my local library, which I devoured. I've now ordered my own copy since evidently more have been published and prices are reasonable.

Telling Memories Among Southern Women: Domestic Workers and Their Employers in the Segregated South is a collection of interviews done by Susan Tucker, a white archivist and librarian and Mary Yelling, an African-American social worker. They are arranged by topics such as "Giving and Receiving." Each topic is introduced in the context of the times and we read interviews from both the domestics and employers. Each interview has an introduction that sets the context for reading the interview. It gives us an historical, qualitative research-based look at these times in the south. While reading what was said by the women who lived different sides of this social institution we get a glimpse of a former time. If you read and enjoyed The Help but would like more, you'll love this book.

Loved this book, have read it several times!, August 3, 1999
While reading this book, I hated to see the pages nearing the end! How I wanted to be with the author on some of her interviews- extremely interesting and readable!

Telling Memories, May 12, 2010
This book is a wonderful supplement to "The Help", it only made "The Help" which I really enjoyed come to life. It is so amazing how much insight and wisdom these workers had into the life of their employers. it's hard to believe it's true not fiction.

Great Book, April 19, 2010
I really enjoyed this book. I read The Help first and it really got me thinking about this part of our history. Even after the slaves were freed, these women were still slaves, and like everything else, the white women thought it was just wonderful that these black women loved them so much to still work for them.

SC Grandmother, November 16, 2010
If you grew up in the south in the 50's and 60's, this is a must read! Mary Whyte has done a wonderful job understanding her subjects and has an amazing ability expressing what she has learned. She spends an incredible amount of time researching her subjects and it is reflected in her work. The book is apparently out of print but I found a great used copy. Mary also illustrates children books and paints the most amazing water colors. You can't go wrong with anything that has Mary Whyte's name on it. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Reviews

A book that is old but still dear to my heart, February 21, 2004
Witches, Midwives, and Nurses hardly qualifies as a `book;' it's more like a large booklet. But in its brevity, it manages to explain part of the answer to how our current health care disaster has come to pass. Written in 1973, this book was perfectly timed to coincide with the era of feminism, drastic changes in women's health, and the rise of midwifery as a once-again quasi-respected profession in the US. I am a nurse and a midwife, and I recently attended a book signing for Ehrenreich's Nickle and Dimed. When I set my dog-eared copy of WMN in front of her, she folded her hands in her lap and sat still. Then she placed her hand flat on the book, looked up at me with glistening eyes, and said, "Oh. Oh, my dear. This is - and probably always will be - my favorite of all the things I've written."
Witches, Midwives, and Nurses is a scholarly history of how male doctors came to take over power and control of the healing arts, traditionally the domain of women. In their concerted efforts to become the sole practitioners of `scientific medicine,' the male `barber-surgeons' discredited, persecuted, and often killed the wisewomen healers. Spanning the time from the medieval years to the Sixties, it throws the entire course of medical history into a new light.
Witches, Midwives, and Nurses is a MUST READ for anyone remotely involved in health care - and that includes everyone, because we are all consumers, if not practitioners. My 80yo father ate it up one afternoon, and that's saying a lot.

I would recommend it highly to anyone., February 7, 1999
The small size of this pamphlet belies its content. Far from being unsubstantiated and poorly researched, it has an annotated bibliography of 16 sources, spanning from the medieval "Malleus Malificarum" to "American Medicine and the Public Interest" (from Yale University Press). This little book is a consice and scholarly work of history, drwing connections between established events that throws the entire course of medical history into a striking new light. A MUST read for anyone even marginally involved in the health field; even more so for Doctors or health practitioners who wish to know more clearly the roots of their field.

Small, important, scholarly, historical summary., November 3, 1998
This document is a small seminal "must-read" for feminist-scholars, midwives, nurses, and witches. This small book presents a powerful history of the tragic loss of traditional feminist knowledge relating to birth by patriarchal religious powers during Europe's dark ages. The book came out of the authors' doctoral research. The historical nature of this book, negates any concern relating to the publication date. I strongly recommend it to eco-feminists, nurses, wicans, midwives, and birth-historians.

Witches, Midwives and Nurses, January 9, 2004
This is a short book on a history of women healers. It was recommended reading in a graduate nursing course on nursing knowledge development. It gave an overview of women healers including witches and midwives up until present-day nursing. The book is written from a feminist perspective, which adds new insights. I recommend that all nurses read this book to challenge themselves. Although written in the 1970's, it is worthwhile to read another's passionate point of view.

Classic and worth reading, February 25, 2004
For any one interested in women's history and in the real idea of "total history" from the Annales school, this book is a must. Of course is not perfect, what it is? However it is time to recover our past, and for that we have to depart from a different perspective, even if it is threatening and contested by some.

as relevant as ever..., February 14, 2010
this is the book that clarified my thoughts around gender and medical professions in the United States. I'm now in school for midwifery, in no small part due to Ehrenreich's analysis in this book. totally inspiring and gives you the pieces to understand why our "healthcare system" is so sexist, among other problems.

a book is a book, April 27, 2009
not sure why we have to leave a review of a book order but well I ordered this book for a friend and it came when it was suppose to and it is in good shape. Hope this helps who ever needs a review of this book.

Witches, Midwives and Nurses, April 20, 2009
This is a difficult little book to find. It is an essential to those who seek to understand the place that nurses have in our health or "disease" care community. As a nurse, it's not easy to use all of the competencies our education has provided. And yet people go without health care. I'm so glad I found it here. ... Read more

Editorial Review

A pioneer in queer theory and literary studies, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick brings together for the first time in Touching Feeling her most powerful explorations of emotion and expression. In essays that show how her groundbreaking work in queer theory has developed into a deep interest in affect, Sedgwick offers what she calls "tools and techniques for nondualistic thought," in the process touching and transforming such theoretical discourses as psychoanalysis, speech-act theory, Western Buddhism, and the Foucauldian "hermeneutics of suspicion."

In prose sometimes somber, often high-spirited, and always accessible and moving, Touching Feeling interrogates—through virtuoso readings of works by Henry James, J. L. Austin, Judith Butler, the psychologist Silvan Tomkins and others—emotion in many forms. What links the work of teaching to the experience of illness? How can shame become an engine for queer politics, performance, and pleasure? Is sexuality more like an affect or a drive? Is paranoia the only realistic epistemology for modern intellectuals? Ultimately, Sedgwick's unfashionable commitment to the truth of happiness propels a book as open-hearted as it is intellectually daring. ... Read more

Reviews

amazing, February 5, 2004
This is one of the best works of "post-" theory that I've read, and the essay on paranoia is a much-needed light in the haze of contemporary grad school education. My copy is dog-eared and dirty and filled with underlined passages / scrawled notes to myself (mostly reading "YES!" or "come back to this"). Sedgwick's essays are brilliant, quirky, challenging, and deeply moving. I really can't find words sufficient for my experience -- this is certainly one of the most synaesthetic and vertigo-inducing books I've read in a long time. The final essay, in particular, continues to call me back. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Before Federer versus Nadal, before Borg versus McEnroe, the greatest tennis match ever played pitted the dominant Don Budge against the seductively handsome Baron Gottfried von Cramm. This deciding 1937 Davis Cup match, played on the hallowed grounds of Wimbledon, was a battle of titans: the world's number one tennis player against the number two; America against Germany; democracy against fascism. For five superhuman sets, the duo’s brilliant shotmaking kept the Centre Court crowd–and the world–spellbound.

But the match’s significance extended well beyond the immaculate grass courts of Wimbledon. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the brink of World War II, one man played for the pride of his country while the other played for his life. Budge, the humble hard-working American who would soon become the first man to win all four Grand Slam titles in the same year, vied to keep the Davis Cup out of the hands of the Nazi regime. On the other side of the net, the immensely popular and elegant von Cramm fought Budge point for point knowing that a loss might precipitate his descent into the living hell being constructed behind barbed wire back home.

Born into an aristocratic family, von Cramm was admired for his devastating good looks as well as his unparalleled sportsmanship. But he harbored a dark secret, one that put him under increasing Gestapo surveillance. And his situation was made even more perilous by his refusal to join the Nazi Party or defend Hitler. Desperately relying on his athletic achievements and the global spotlight to keep him out of the Gestapo’s clutches, his strategy was to keep traveling and keep winning. A Davis Cup victory would make him the toast of Germany. A loss might be catastrophic.

Watching the mesmerizingly intense match from the stands was von Cramm’s mentor and all-time tennis superstar Bill Tilden–a consummate showman whose double life would run in ironic counterpoint to that of his German pupil.

Set at a time when sports and politics were inextricably linked, A Terrible Splendor gives readers a courtside seat on that fateful day, moving gracefully between the tennis match for the ages and the dramatic events leading Germany, Britain, and America into global war. A book like no other in its weaving of social significance and athletic spectacle, this soul-stirring account is ultimately a tribute to the strength of the human spirit. ... Read more

Reviews

a splendid book!, May 2, 2009
This book is simply magnificent - writing at its best. In this exquisite account of purportedly the most important tennis match ever, Marshall Jon Fisher has succeeded in creating a tale that both informs and entertains. The tennis match itself is fascinating, but by putting it in historical perspective, Fisher has provided a backdrop that illuminates the lives behind the tennis players. This book provides a terrifying and realistic history of the world in the 1930's and 1940's and peoples it with both historic and lesser known figures, all of whom played a part in the world of tennis. His conclusion that provides a finale to each of the characters is as important to the book as the tale of the tennis match itself. I am grateful to have had an opportunity to learn more about the history of tennis and the biographies of some of tennis' most important figures through such an eloquent medium. If you are interested in history, tennis, movie stars, or brilliant writing, READ THIS BOOK!

More Than a Sports Hero, May 21, 2009
Sports and nationalism often clash, and did so memorably when Adolf Hitler was in power. The story of how the four gold medals won by non-Aryan Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics embarrassed the Fuhrer has often been told. Of somewhat lesser renown is the 1936 heavyweight fight between Max Schmeling and Joe Louis, of which a German radio announcer said, "It is every German's obligation to stay up tonight. Max will fight overseas with a Negro for the hegemony of the white race!" I am no sports fan, but I knew of these instances. I had not heard of another significant sports battle of the time, a tennis match in 1937 between American Don Budge and German Gottfried von Cramm. It is the subject of an exciting book, _A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played_ (Crown) by Marshall Jon Fisher. I still am not a sports fan, much less a tennis fan, but this isn't really a sports story; it is a thoroughly riveting account of intense human endeavor.

There may be "three extraordinary men" in the subtitle and in the book, but Cramm is the one the book is really about. The others are Don Budge and Bill Tilden. Budge wasn't extraordinary except in his capacity to play tennis. Tilden was extraordinary in that in the 1920s, and also that he was a flamboyant but closeted homosexual whose exploits were constantly bothering the American tennis bureaucracy. Tilden is part of this story because he was keeping his hand in the game by helping to coach Cramm and his German team. But this is Cramm's story, or rather the story of Gottfried Alexander Maximilian Walter Kurt von Cramm, born at his family's manor near Hanover in 1909. Cramm was a gentleman, with a refined, thoughtful, but powerful game. He was the soul of honor, refusing to take points the officials mistakenly called for him. He was handsome; one observer said, "Every year that von Cramm steps onto the Centre Court at Wimbledon, a few hundred young women sit a little straighter and forget about their escorts." Cramm was, however, a homosexual. His homosexuality was not much of a problem in Weimar Berlin in the early 1920s, but after that the Nazis were putting homosexuals into concentration camps. He detested the Third Reich, refusing to talk it up when he was on tour. The match to decide the 1937 Davis Cup at Wimbledon is one of the many tennis tournaments described here. Fisher has woven parts of the match into the larger narrative of the book, and though the actual play isn't as important as the larger story he has to tell, the battle between Cramm and Budge sounds as if it was a game no one in the stands would ever forget. Journalist Alistair Cooke was there, and wrote, "The two white figures began to set the rhythms of something that looked more like ballet than a game where you hit a ball. People stopped asking other people to sit down. The umpire gave up stopping the game to beg for silence during rallies." James Thurber was there, too, and reflected on the end of the match that it had been "something so close to art that at the end it was more as if a concert had ended than a tennis match. The shouts of `Bravo!' when it was over came out of an emotion usually reserved for something more important." Hardly anyone knew that, as Cramm put it himself, "I'm playing for my life." As long as he kept winning, the Nazis were willing to overlook his unorthodox ways, and when Budge managed a last splendid shot, no one beside Cramm knew how much he had lost. But he was a real sportsman. Having lost the match, he went to Budge, clasped his hand, and said, "Don, this was absolutely the finest match I have ever played in my life. I'm very happy I could have played it against you, whom I like so much. Congratulations."

Cramm had been right about playing for his life. Less than a year later, he was thrown into prison for "moral delinquency", and afterwards he was sent to the Russian front. He got frostbite in both legs, but after the war he returned to tennis, and took up cotton importing. He couldn't visit the United States again; even if it had been a bunch of Nazis who had convicted him of a morals charge, it prevented him from getting a visa. It could have been much worse for him; homosexuals liberated from the prison camps after the war were sent to regular prisons to finish their sentences. The law making them criminals wasn't revoked until 1994. _A Terrible Splendor_ is the astonishing, inspiring story of a sports hero who was not merely a heroic tennis player, but a genuinely heroic man.

Terribly Splendid, May 16, 2009
I am half way through "A Terrible Splendor" and plan to creep along until the very end. If I waited to the last page to share with readers how much I am enjoying this book, that time might never come. This is because "A Terrible Splendor" is one of those book I don't want to finish. I love historical facts and every fews pages offers me some tantalizing tidbit. Fisher's development of von Cramm, Tilden, and Budge is brilliant and I have come to really know them -- and feel for them. So, I want to hang out with them for a while. The story is not all fun and games and this knowing has me turning pages with mixed feelings. I want to learn more about the lives of these interesting people, and to follow the excitement of the great match, but I do not yet know its cost. The backdrop of Nazi Germany makes for a compelling story line and the way Fisher weaves it all together makes for a riveting read. I highly recommend this terribly splendid book.

excellent, May 10, 2009
I enjoyed reading this book - fast paced, tightly written, just enough side line drama to keep it interesting and great character development.

Riveting, July 12, 2009
I've recommended this book to all of my friends and I don't even play tennis. What a great story of time passed. This is an education and won't disappoint. I have a waiting list of 9 people wanting to read the book.

Many Lives, One Match, September 8, 2009
A Terrible Splendor by Marshall Jon Fisher is one of the best books I've read this year for [...]. The subtitle of the book is "Three Extraordinary Men, A World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Every Played" and it is all this, and so much more. It is certainly the very best tennis book I've ever read but even for non-tennis players, this book will hold you from first page until the last, providing suspense, thrills, and very sobering, moving, and compelling history.

In telling the lives of Baron Gottfried Von Cramm, German tennis player, Don Budge, an American player from head to toe, and Bill Tilden, one of the mightiest racquet-wielders ever, and building their stories around the 1937 Davis Cup match between Cramm and Budge, Fisher brings to vibrant life the years between the two world wars, and the very different places that each of these players came from and answered to. Fisher illustrates through strong and engaging writing the dramatic differences that country, age, and sexual orientation played for these three men, and brings home the magnitude of their achievements, on court but also in their lives.

Cramm was an aristocratic German with impeccable good looks, sportsmanship, and tennis playing. Opposed to the policies and practices of the Nazis, and gay, Cramm was safe from Nazi persecution only so long as he kept winning tennis matches for Germany. Budge was a middle-class American with phenomenal tennis skills, a love for Jazz and good times with the Hollywood cronies who befriended him, and solid support from the United States Tennis Association. Bill Tilden was the most famous tennis player of his time and into our own, as heralded for his amazing and enduring tennis-playing as for his off-court persona, infamous for his on-court antics, and highly irritating to the USTA for his bullheadedness as well as his ill-closeted gayness. Fisher gives us insight into all three, as well as solid introductions to many other figures of the times, including American tennis player Gene Mako, Queen Mary of England, English playwright Christopher Isherwood, German-Jewish tennis player Daniel Prenn, up and coming American Bobby Riggs, Hollywood types like Jack Benny and Charlie Chaplin, heiress Barbara Hutton, and Nazi terrors Goring, Himmler, and Hitler himself. That was the mix of the 1930s, a world indeed "poised for war." For some, World War II would bring persecution, deprivations, and personal tragedy, for others a new responsibility and realization of life's chaos, and for others, death.

The tennis match around which A Terrible Splendor is structured is told with perfect timing, building momentum and suspense then taking a break (neither disruptive nor jarring) to tell more of the background history, personal and political and social, and then taking us back into the match. The book drove me through emotional ranges of tears, anger, and excitement, and I could not put it down, as caught up as I was in the amazing lives of these three very distinct individuals, the times they lived in, and the match itself. Indeed, I was on the edge of my seat throughout this marvelous book and unsure until the end who won this incredible battle that went five sets, who survived the spiraling years into World War II, and who met the promise of a world beyond tennis and beyond war. I will never forget Cramm, Budge, or Tilden, or this great book, A Terrible Splendor.

Elegant!, August 23, 2009
With the elegance that von Cramm played tennis, Marshall Fisher writes. I don't know much about tennis,or at least I didn't before reading "Terrible Splendor" but was fascinated by the game, the history, and the humanity of the players. It is indeed a thought provoking book and a fun, entertaining read. I recommend it to anyone interested in history, tennis, and the working-out of human existence.

Tennis, and then some!, July 21, 2009
Like the world of the arts and politics, sports is no stranger to larger than life personalities whose individual lives often fail to mirror the success of those individuals. Marshall Jon Fisher, in his excellent new book, "A Terrible Splendor", recounts the activities of the top players in tennis in the late 1930s, both on and off the court. What he reveals is hardly shocking by today's standards but it allows the reader to get a glimpse of how tennis fit into the larger world picture as war clouds were gathering in Europe.

The thrust of the book centers around one match...a Davis Cup final played in London in 1937...a match often thought to be the most exciting ever played, where American newcomer Don Budge upset the German aristocrat Gottfried von Cramm. The ramifications of that match extended worldwide, but in no country more so than Germany. Ostensibly, "A Terrible Splendor" is about the von Cramm/Budge meeting, but it becomes almost a sideshow when the issues of von Cramm, a German homosexual and mentored by the greatest tennis player of his day, "Big" Bill Tilden, also a gay man, cross paths. Fisher is very good at blending in societal parallels regarding the mores of the day, especially on the issue of sexuality. That both men were gay, and known to be gay in tennis circles, and the fact that dicreetness played a role it wouldn't play today, reminds each reader of how different things were just a couple of generations ago.

Fisher's narrative style builds nicely. He's good at telling the story of the match, but his historical perspective completes the book. It's not always easy to have a courtside seat (in this case) but the author manages to do so with a crisp play-by-play. I highly recommend "A Terrible Splendor" for its insightful look at the game, the players of the time and the society in which they lived.

Excellent mix of tennis, Roaring 20s, sportsmanship, Nazism, gay issues, June 28, 2009
As Don Budge replaced Bill Tilden as America's top tennis player, the Roaring 20s were well into the Depression. But, Tilden was still one of the top sports icons of that era.

But, the US Lawn Tennis Association was glad to see him fall. They knew, as few others did, despite jokes, that Tilden was gay.

Meanwhile, across the ocean, aristocratic Baron Gottfried von Cramm resisted calls first, then pressure, to join the Nazi Party even as he rose in the tennis ranks. He, though married, was also gay, and watched over his shoulder as the 30s grew longer.

Then, befriended by Tilden in the mid-30s, he raised his tennis game even higher. And with Tilden rebuffed even as a USLTA coach, so, he sat watching von Cramm face off against Budge in a do-or-die Davis Cup match three weeks after Budge had whipped von Cramm to win Wimbledon.

Fisher weaves these story lines together, both before and after the dramatic clash, including the eventual arrests of both Tilden, in the U.S., and von Cramm, in Nazi Germany.

An excellent look at various slices of life, expertly woven together.

very interesting, June 26, 2009
quite interesting juxtaposition of tennis greats and pre world war 2 history. Well written. ... Read more