Scott Herring
Queering the Underworld: Slumming, Literature, and the Undoing of Lesbian and Gay History
"Scott Herring’s bravely searching book deserves wide and careful attention. At once a compelling account of modern U.S. slumming literatures and a persuasive polemical intervention in contemporary queer studies, Queering the Underworld is original in conception, efficient in execution, and consistently engaging."—Christopher Looby, University of California, Los Angeles

   

Joseph A. Massad
Desiring Arabs
"With impressive learning and sharp wit Massad describes the internalization of European conceptions of the human among Arab intellectuals, both nationalist and Islamist, since the nineteenth century. His account of their concern to re-orient sexual and civilizational desires (both being closely intertwined in the European imagination) is quite stunning. Anyone interested in the modernization of Middle Eastern culture cannot afford to miss this book—nor, for that matter can scholars seriously engaged in postcolonial research or in lesbian and gay studies."—Talal Asad, City University of New York

   

Peter Hennen
Faeries, Bears, and Leathermen: Men in Community Queering the Masculine
"There is an artistic elegance to Hennen’s ability to provide a playful and ethnographically rich glimpse into the social worlds he travels through while at the same time adding to important theoretical debates in the sociologies of gender, sexuality, and queer theory."—Wayne H. Brekhus, University of Missouri—Columbia

   

Matt Houlbrook
Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957
"From the dockside pubs and river steps of the East End to the glittering Long Bar of the Trocadero…, Houlbrook’s narrative meanders across a capital city as protean as the middle-class men and working-class boys who lived and lusted, loved and (more often than not) loitered and lost within it."—Peter J. M. Wayne, Spectator
Read an excerpt.

   

Mark D. Jordan
Blessing Same-Sex Unions: The Perils of Queer Romance and the Confusions of Christian Marriage
"A powerful, at times brilliant, brief for Christian churches blessing same-sex unions.…Jordan traces the history of Christian thought about marriage…and insists that there is no fixed, transhistorical Christian ideal.…This is not merely a contribution to gay studies; any Christian who wants to think more clearly about marriage should read Jordan."—Publishers Weekly

   

David K. Johnson
The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government
"Given the degree of injustice and the scale of suffering caused by the Lavender Scare, it seems astonishing that no one before Johnson has thought to write its history.…Should be studied by everyone who is interested in the McCarthy era and its implications"—Hugh Brogan, Times Literary Supplement
Read an interview with the author.

   

John D'Emilio
Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin
"A sympathetic, probing biography that brings homosexuality to the fore as a factor in the black activist's seminal but largely forgotten role in the civil rights movement. An eye-opening look at the personal ordeal underlying a revolutionary quest."—Kirkus Reviews

   

Tze-Lan D. Sang
The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China
"An absorbing and provocative read. Sang traces women's same-sex desire and its displacement, deferral, and denunciation in Chinese fiction, sexology, and contemporary social movements. Neither triumphalist narrative nor cautionary tale, The Emerging Lesbian challenges us to reimagine women's sexuality. It will inspire argument, backtalk, and more good work."—Gail Hershatter, University of California, Santa Cruz

   

Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor
Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret
"This lively and engaging book is smart and moving, serious and entertaining. With a quirky cast of Key West drag queens, Rupp and Taylor tell a compelling story about the political import of performances that confound the boundaries of masculine and feminine, gay and straight, and respectable and vulgar."—Joanne Meyerowitz, author of How Sex Changed
Read an excerpt.

   

Jonathan Ned Katz
Love Stories: Sex between Men before Homosexuality
"This highly provocative, often startling reconsideration of 19th and early 20th-century male-male sexual relationships.…is described and shaped with enormous sensitivity and judiciousness. Katz's arguments are strong and vibrant.…[He] contributes surprising, even shocking, insights into how sexual and emotional relationships are constructed, as well as demonstrating the enormous diversity and malleability of human eroticism."—Publishers Weekly