The essays here give readers an eyewitness glimpse into mid-century queer life will intrigue (if not shock) younger LGBT+ people.
Books
Book Review: “The Club” — When One Lived for Good Conversation
The Club is an entertaining and absorbing journey to another century, when the art of communication and the spirit of thoughtful engagement attracted men and women of acute sensibilities.
Book Review: “The Ideas That Made America” — Not Made in America
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen’s The Ideas That Made America provides an exciting, if quicksilver, tour through intellectual history.
Book Review: “Coders” — Brave New World, Coded
Coders had nothing in their intellectual toolbox that would help them understand people.
Book Review: “Treading the Uneven Road” — In Search of Discovery and Understanding
L. M. Brown writes with a sure hand about men and women beset with dreams and longings, who fall in and out of love with each other, and who harbor secrets that shape their lives in unpredictable ways.
Book Review: “Prague Spring” — The Fragility of Freedom
This consistently interesting novel adds an unforgettable dimension to an historical event about which we thought we knew all there was to know.
Book Review: “The Ash Family” — A Commune or a Cult?
The Ash Family is a full-color illustration of how the modern world leaves people vulnerable to radical ideas.
Book Review: “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen” — A Kind of Apotheosis
In more pedantic hands, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen could easily have been a tedious and frustrating read. Instead, despite the dense and ultimately inconclusive source material, the book is continuously fascinating.
Book Review: “Creating the Jazz Solo” — An Iconoclastic View
Rarely does a book leave me questioning the ways in which I understood, or thought I understood, the construction of some of the most formative solos in jazz history.
Poetry Review: “Casting Deep Shade” — On Humanity and the Beech Tree
C.D. Wright has woven a poetic text that mirrors the tangled intimacy between humans and the beech, in all of its violence, its confusion, and its beauty.