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Rating: 
Summary: A Fascinating Collection!
Review: A collection of fascinating personal stories of individual and collection action against injustice! This book dispels myths that give central location to the Stonewall rebellion, showing instead a much more complex history of activism for gay and lesbian rights. Although the biographies are uneven (some are too short, and some are written by their subjects' partners, hence too celebratory), most of these approximately forty biographies show the successes and charms, foibles and failures of a remarkable group of people -- gay, lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual, transgendered, non-transgendered -- who all made a tremendous difference in the quality of life possible for gays and lesbians in the United States today.
Rating:
Summary: Indispensable documentation of a major social movement
Review: Launched a half-century ago, the American gay and lesbian rights movement has achieved a remarkable success. Its influence has spread throughout the world, contributing enormously to the happiness, productivity, and self-esteem of homosexual citizens elsewhere. For the most part, those who launched this wonderful development in the 1950s did not realize, or did not record, the essence of their achievement. They were too busy doing their work. Now, under the guidance of Vern Bullough, a major scholar in the field, it has been written down. In biographies of some forty individuals, many fascinating in their own right, the story is told. It is as if one received a whole raft of biographies in one volume! This book must be seen and read in order to understand its remarkable contribution, a contribution that is significant for all of us.
Rating:
Summary: Indispensable documentation of a major social movement
Review: Launched a half-century ago, the American gay and lesbian rights movement has achieved a remarkable success. Its influence has spread throughout the world, contributing enormously to the happiness, productivity, and self-esteem of homosexual citizens elsewhere. For the most part, those who launched this wonderful development in the 1950s did not realize, or did not record, the essence of their achievement. They were too busy doing their work. Now, under the guidance of Vern Bullough, a major scholar in the field, it has been written down. In biographies of some forty individuals, many fascinating in their own right, the story is told. It is as if one received a whole raft of biographies in one volume! This book must be seen and read in order to understand its remarkable contribution, a contribution that is significant for all of us.
Rating:
Summary: A volume of great value
Review: This book is worth buying and keeping forever, if only for two of the biographical entries: the essay on Kinsey by the brilliant C. A. Tripp, and the essay on Warren Johansson by William A. Percy. Actually, either one of these two is worth the price of admission. You will gain very valuable insights into Kinsey -- a famous person -- and into Warren Johannson -- a person who accumulated no fame at all. But somehow, strange to say, they may have been the two most important gay activists of the twentieth century! Both Kinsey and Johannson were born into highly religious families. Kinsey had a dictatorial Protestant father -- a Sunday -school tyrant who was a hypocrite to boot -- while Johannson was apparently born into a Jewish family and subsequently changed his name to the Aryan-sounding Johannson in rebellion against the Jewish faith. Kinsey, of course, published "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" during the early 50's, while Johansson was involved in overt gay scholarship from the earliest days, contributing enormous gifts of learning and scholarship wherever asked, without fee, a wandering scholar and a free spirit. Very highly recommended!
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