On a freezing January in 1992, five teenage girls crowded into a car. By the end of the night, only four of them were alive. The fifth had been tortured and mutilated nearly beyond recognition. Her name was Shanda Sharer; her age--twelve. When the people of Madison, Indiana heard that a brutal murder had been committed in their midst, they were stunned. Then the story became even more bizarre. The four accused murderers were all girls under the age of eighteen: Melinda Loveless, Laurie Tackett, Hope Rippey, and Toni Lawrence. Veteran true crime journalist Aphrodite Jones reveals the shocking truth behind the most savage crime in Indiana history--A tragic story of twisted love and insane jealousy, teen lesbianism, and the sadistic ritual killing of a young Innocent girl. Read more

A groundbreaking study of the connections between homoeroticism, cannibalism, and cultures of consumption in American literature and US slave culture. Scholars of US and transatlantic slavery have largely ignored or dismissed accusations that Black Americans were cannibalized. Vincent Woodard takes the enslaved person’s claims of human consumption seriously, focusing on both the literal starvation of the slave and the tropes of cannibalism on the part of the slaveholder, and further draws attention to the ways in which Blacks experienced their consumption as a fundamentally homoerotic occurrence. The Delectable Negro explores these connections between homoeroticism, cannibalism, and cultures of consumption in the context of American literature and US slave culture. Utilizing many staples of African American literature and culture, such as the slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass, as well as other less circulated materials like James L. Smith’s slave narrative, runaway slave advertisements, and numerous articles from Black newspapers published in the nineteenth century, Woodard traces the racial assumptions, political aspirations, gender codes, and philosophical frameworks that dictated both European and white American arousal towards Black males and hunger for Black male flesh. Woodard uses these texts to unpack how slaves struggled not only against social consumption, but also against endemic mechanisms of starvation and hunger designed to break them. He concludes with an examination of the controversial chain gang oral sex scene in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, suggesting that even at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century, we are still at a loss for language with which to describe Black male hunger within a plantation culture of consumption.   Praise for The Delectable NegroWinner of the 2015 LGBT Studies Award presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation “A bold and brilliant book.”—Carla L. Peterson, author of Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City “With unflinching clarity, The Delectable Negro exposes and examines the pervasive cultural fantasies that have rendered the enslaved black body into a consumable object from the eighteenth century to the present…. Its powerful insights will continue to generate new lines of important inquiry for years to come.”—American Historical Review Read more

This is the first comprehensive book in English on the fate of the homosexuals in Nazi Germany. The author, a German refugee, examines the climate and conditions that gave rise to a vicious campaign against Germany's gays, as directed by Himmler and his SS--persecution that resulted in tens of thousands of arrests and thousands of deaths.In this Nazi crusade, homosexual prisoners were confined to death camps where, forced to wear pink triangles, they constituted the lowest rung in the camp hierarchy. The horror of camp life is described through diaries, previously untranslated documents, and interviews with and letters from survivors, revealing how the anti-homosexual campaign was conducted, the crackpot homophobic fantasies that fueled it, the men who made it possible, and those who were its victims, this chilling book sheds light on a corner of twentieth-century history that has been hidden in the shadows much too long. Read more

J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph McCarthy, and Roy Cohn were titanic figures in midcentury America, wielding national power in government and the legal system through intimidation and insinuation. Hoover’s FBI thrived on secrecy, threats, and illegal surveillance, while McCarthy and Cohn will forever be associated with the infamous anticommunist smear campaign of the early 1950s, which culminated in McCarthy’s public disgrace during televised Senate hearings. In Gossip Men, Christopher M. Elias takes a probing look at these tarnished figures to reveal a host of startling new connections among gender, sexuality, and national security in twentieth-century American politics. Elias illustrates how these three men solidified their power through the skillful use of deliberately misleading techniques like implication, hyperbole, and photographic manipulation. Just as provocatively, he shows that the American people of the 1950s were particularly primed to accept these coded threats because they were already familiar with such tactics from widely popular gossip magazines. By using gossip as a lens to examine profound issues of state security and institutional power, Elias thoroughly transforms our understanding of the development of modern American political culture.   Read more

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNERNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: The New York Times * NPR * Vogue * Gay Times * Artforum * “Gay Bar is an absolute tour de force.” –Maggie Nelson "Atherton Lin has a five-octave, Mariah Carey-esque range for discussing gay sex.” –New York Times Book ReviewAs gay bars continue to close at an alarming rate, a writer looks back to find out what’s being lost in this indispensable, intimate, and stylish celebration of queer history. Strobing lights and dark rooms; throbbing house and drag queens on counters; first kisses, last call: the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression—whatever your scene, whoever you’re seeking. But in urban centers around the world, they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin wondering: What was the gay bar? How have they shaped him? And could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it? In Gay Bar, the author embarks upon a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub, and dive revealing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history. In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and dazzling as a disco ball, he time-travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970s to a warren of cruising tunnels built beneath London in the 1770s; from chichi bars in the aftermath of AIDS to today’s fluid queer spaces; through glory holes, into Crisco-slicked dungeons and down San Francisco alleys. He charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out—and a chance encounter one restless night that would change his life forever.  The journey that emerges is a stylish and nuanced inquiry into the connection between place and identity—a tale of liberation, but one that invites us to go beyond the simplified Stonewall mythology and enter lesser-known battlefields in the struggle to carve out a territory. Elegiac, randy, and sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry, a love story and an epic night out to remember. Read more

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Central Park birder Christian Cooper takes us beyond the viral video that shocked a nation and into a world of avian adventures, global excursions, and the unexpected lessons you can learn from a life spent looking up.“Wondrous . . . captivating.”—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of An Immense WorldA Washington Post and Chicago Public LibraryBest Book of the Year • Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal Christian Cooper is a self-described “Blerd” (Black nerd), an avid comics fan and expert birder who devotes every spring to gazing upon the migratory birds that stop to rest in Central Park, just a subway ride away from where he lives in New York City. While in the park one morning in May 2020, Cooper was engaged in the birdwatching ritual that had been a part of his life since he was ten years old when what might have been a routine encounter with a dog walker exploded age-old racial tensions. Cooper’s viral video of the incident would send shock waves through the nation.In Better Living Through Birding, Cooper tells the story of his extraordinary life leading up to the now-infamous incident in Central Park and shows how a life spent looking up at the birds prepared him, in the most uncanny of ways, to be a gay, Black man in America today. From sharpened senses that work just as well at a protest as in a park to what a bird like the Common Grackle can teach us about self-acceptance, Better Living Through Birding exults in the pleasures of a life lived in pursuit of the natural world and invites you to discover them yourself.Equal parts memoir, travelogue, and primer on the art of birding, this is Cooper’s story of learning to claim and defend space for himself and others like him, from his days at Marvel Comics introducing the first gay storylines to vivid and life-changing birding expeditions through Africa, Australia, the Americas, and the Himalayas. Better Living Through Birding recounts Cooper’s journey through the wonderful world of birds and what they can teach us about life, if only we would look and listen. Read more

“An eloquent testimonial to the power of love and the devastation of loss” from the National Book Award–winning author of Becoming a Man (Publishers Weekly). In 1974, Paul Monette met Roger Horwitz, the man with whom he would share more than a decade of his life. In 1986, Roger died of complications from AIDS. Borrowed Time traces this love story from start to tragic finish. At a time when the medical community was just beginning to understand this mysterious and virulent disease, Monette and others like him were coming to terms with unfathomable loss. This personal account of the early days of the AIDS crisis tells the story of love in the face of death. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Borrowed Time was one of the first memoirs to deal candidly with AIDS and is as moving and relevant now as it was more than twenty-five years ago. Written with fierce honesty and heartwarming tenderness, this book is part love story, part testimony, and part requiem. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Paul Monette including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the Paul Monette papers of the UCLA Library Special Collections. Read more

In this moving guide, a gay man shares his personal journey of letting go of shame and moving forward with self-compassion and healing. Even though an entire generation of men have openly and freely come out of the closet, gay men still struggle with self-acceptance. Sexually transmitted diseases, depression, and suicide occur more frequently for gay men than straight men. It doesn’t have to be this way. Through brave individual stories and compassionate analysis, The Velvet Rage explores how shame is insidious, and can be traced back to childhood feelings of “otherness”. Drawing on contemporary psychological research, Alan Downs offers a path to emotional well-being and an end to self-defeating behavior.Velvet Rage is an empowering book you'll wish you read long ago. It’s not too late to begin the healing process. Read more

Increasing numbers of people are identifying as belonging to a gender different to that of their biological sex. There's a commonly held assumption that some people are ‘trans’ and ‘born into the wrong body. Most healthcare interventions will ‘affirm’ the person’s preferred gender and help them to transition often in a physically irreversible way.But what if someone who makes a gender transition later changes their mind? What if they regret making irreversible physical changes to their body? What then?This book is about the detransitioners and the desisters for whom gender transition was not the hoped for solution.The people whom society has been led to believe do not exist and who are not followed up by the gender clinics who facilitated their gender transition. But those of us who work with them clinically know all too well that they exist and that their numbers are growing rapidly.This book sheds light on the phenomenon of detransition and gives a voice to the detrans people and the parents for whom transition can impact with devastating consequences.“Beset by scandal and pseudoscience, the edifice of Transgender Medicine is toppling under its own weight. Dr Hakeem provides the ultimate guide to understanding why the current medical regime failed, and how we can build a more sober and compassionate treatment regime for sufferers of gender dysphoria.”Abigail Shrier, author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters“By turns touching and heartbreaking, this uniquely insightful book combines the insights of the first clinician to write about the modern explosion in trans identification from outside the ‘gender affirmative’ paradigm, and those of the detransitioners who are its fallout.”Helen Joyce, author of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality“Dr Hakeem has been deeply involved in working with those with disturbance in relation to Gender for very many years and is one of leading thinkers in this area... he was there at the beginning. This book makes a unique contribution to this discipline... Dr Hakeem brings his long experience and knowledge of that most neglected group - those who changed their mind, 'detransitioners'. Their painful stories have been silenced in the media storm and Dr Hakeem gives them a voice. This book... will be essential reading for all those involved in work either professionally or as carers of individuals in distress in relation to their gender... given the huge storm this subject has created... it will be of considerable interest to the general reader who wants to understand this area from the wise and balanced perspective Dr Hakeem provides.”Dr David Bell, Psychoanalyst and former Governor of Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust“DETRANS is essential reading for anyone who is interested in supporting people with gender-related distress. This is a compelling read. The harrowing stories of the detransitioners are combined with practical approaches that can offer hope... Anyone embarking on medical or social transition should read this. Parents of gender-distressed children should read this. Professionals should read this. Most of all, those people who are lost in transition, who have already medically transitioned and are now reflecting on their situation, should read this as they will come to realise there are many ways to cope with the trauma of an inappropriate medical transition. DETRANS lays bare the shameful behaviour of medical professionals and therapists who perpetrated the notion that medical transition could act as a panacea for vulnerable people. This book brings solace to everyone who has been harmed by medical transition as it heralds the beginning of a new era of truth and reconciliation that has become necessary in the wake of the unhinged excesses of gender ideology.”Stella O’Malley, Founder of Genspect Read more

David Carter's Stonewall is the basis of the PBS American Experience documentary Stonewall Uprising.In 1969, a series of riots over police action against The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, changed the longtime landscape of the homosexual in society literally overnight. Since then the event itself has become the stuff of legend, with relatively little hard information available on the riots themselves. Now, based on hundreds of interviews, an exhaustive search of public and previously sealed files, and over a decade of intensive research into the history and the topic, Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution brings this singular event to vivid life in this, the definitive story of one of history's most singular events. A Randy Shilts / Publishing Triangle Award Finalist"Riveting...Not only the definitive examination of the riots but an absorbing history of pre-Stonewall America, and how the oppression and pent-up rage of those years finally ignited on a hot New York night." - Boston Globe Read more

Evidence of Being opens on a grim scene: Washington DC’s gay black community in the 1980s, ravaged by AIDS, the crack epidemic, and a series of unsolved murders, seemingly abandoned by the government and mainstream culture. Yet in this darkest of moments, a new vision of community and hope managed to emerge. Darius Bost’s account of the media, poetry, and performance of this time and place reveals a stunning confluence of activism and the arts. In Washington and New York during the 1980s and ’90s, gay black men banded together, using creative expression as a tool to challenge the widespread views that marked them as unworthy of grief. They created art that enriched and reimagined their lives in the face of pain and neglect, while at the same time forging a path toward bold new modes of existence. At once a corrective to the predominantly white male accounts of the AIDS crisis and an openhearted depiction of the possibilities of black gay life, Evidence of Being above all insists on the primacy of community over loneliness, and hope over despair. Read more

The Four Rooms: An InQueery on Sexual Freedom and Well-beingby David Wichman is an intimate and thought-provoking exploration on the struggles many face around sexuality. Rooted in over 18 years of experience as a gay male sex worker, David shares raw and personal experiences bearing witness to those grappling with sexual shame, inadequacy, and societal expectations, offering insights into the journey toward uncovering more self-acceptance and connection.This book invites readers to make space for the parts of themselves that may be undiscovered or exiled by guilt and societal conditioning, encouraging curiosity, compassion, and the possibility of embracing one’s whole sexual self. Through candid storytelling and reflective practices, The Four Rooms offers an empowering framework for navigating the complexities of sexuality with openness and courage. It’s a compelling invitation to confront, and question our beliefs, and rediscover the richness of sexual freedom. Read more

Winner of a 2012 Stonewall Book Award in nonfictionThe first book to cover the entirety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from pre-1492 to the present.In the 1620s, Thomas Morton broke from Plymouth Colony and founded Merrymount, which celebrated same-sex desire, atheism, and interracial marriage. Transgender evangelist Jemima Wilkinson, in the early 1800s, changed her name to “Publick Universal Friend,” refused to use pronouns, fought for gender equality, and led her own congregation in upstate New York. In the mid-nineteenth century, internationally famous Shakespearean actor Charlotte Cushman led an openly lesbian life, including a well-publicized “female marriage.” And in the late 1920s, Augustus Granville Dill was fired by W. E. B. Du Bois from the NAACP’s magazine the Crisis after being arrested for a homosexual encounter. These are just a few moments of queer history that Michael Bronski highlights in this groundbreaking book.   Intellectually dynamic and endlessly provocative, A Queer History of the United States is more than a “who’s who” of queer history: it is a book that radically challenges how we understand American history. Drawing upon primary documents, literature, and cultural histories, noted scholar and activist Michael Bronski charts the breadth of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from 1492 to the 1990s, and has written a testament to how the LGBT experience has profoundly shaped our country, culture, and history.   A Queer History of the United States abounds with startling examples of unknown or often ignored aspects of American history—the ineffectiveness of sodomy laws in the colonies, the prevalence of cross-dressing women soldiers in the Civil War, the impact of new technologies on LGBT life in the nineteenth century, and how rock music and popular culture were, in large part, responsible for the devastating backlash against gay rights in the late 1970s. Most striking, Bronski documents how, over centuries, various incarnations of social purity movements have consistently attempted to regulate all sexuality, including fantasies, masturbation, and queer sex. Resisting these efforts, same-sex desire flourished and helped make America what it is today.   At heart, A Queer History of the United States is simply about American history. It is a book that will matter both to LGBT people and heterosexuals. This engrossing and revelatory history will make readers appreciate just how queer America really is. Read more

What does it mean to thrive as a gay man in today’s modern world?How do we navigate the complexities of modern gay culture? Where can you turn when you need advice, perspective, or just want to feel seen?A Gay Man’s Guide to the 21st Century is your guide for answering all these questions and more. This A-to-Z exploration dives into the heart of life as a gay man, offering insights, advice, and reflections that speak to our unique experiences.Here’s a sneak peek at some of what you can expect inside:Tips on navigating dating, relationships, and sex in the modern worldAdvice on looking after your mental healthThe evolving sociology and psychology of gay cultureTravel tips for experiencing the world as a gay manThoughts on identity, faith, and sexuality overallInside, you’ll find guidance on everything from dating and sex to faith and identity with the final goal to help you find your place in our subculture and give you a sense of understanding and belonging. Read more

Both highly praised and intensely controversial, this brilliant book produces dramatic evidence that at one time the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches not only sanctioned unions between partners of the same sex, but sanctified them--in ceremonies strikingly similar to heterosexual marriage ceremonies. Read more

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Dominick Dunne seemed to live his entire adult life in the public eye, but in this biography Robert Hofler reveals a conflicted, enigmatic man who reinvented himself again and again. As a television and film producer in the 1950s–1970s, hobnobbing with Humphrey Bogart and Natalie Wood, he found success and crushing failure in a pitiless Hollywood. As a Vanity Fair journalist covering the lives of the rich and powerful, he mesmerized readers with his detailed coverage of spectacular murder cases—O.J. Simpson, the Menendez brothers, Michael Skakel, Phil Spector, and Claus von Bülow. He had his own television show, Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege, and Justic. His five best-selling novels, including The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, People Like Us, and An Inconvenient Woman, were inspired by real lives and scandals. The brother of John Gregory Dunne and brother-in-law of Joan Didion, he was a friend and confidante of many literary luminaries. Dunne also had the ear of some of the world's most famous women, among them Princess Diana, Nancy Reagan, Liz Smith, Barbara Walters, and Elizabeth Taylor. Dunne admitted to inventing himself, and it was that public persona he wrote about in his own memoir, The Way We Lived Then. Left out of that account, but brought to light here, were his intense rivalry with his brother John Gregory, the gay affairs and relationships he had throughout his marriage and beyond, and his fights with editors at Vanity Fair. Robert Hofler also reveals the painful rift in the family after the murder of Dominick's daughter, Dominique—compounded by his coverage of her killer's trial, which launched his career as a reporter. Read more

Gender Dysphoria: Understanding the Symptoms and Treating Gender DysphoriaMichelle Serena's eBook on “Gender Dysphoria” Now on Amazon.comResearcher and author, Michelle Serena tackles the controversial subject of transgenderism and gender dysphoria in her new eBook, Gender Dysphoria. With all the recent information in the news on transgender people this book comes at the right time. I Am Cait, the new show about the life of Caitlyn Jenner as she transitions into her new world separate from “Bruce Jenner” is a startling reminder that this dysphoria is not only real, but that individuals who are going through this condition have options and have a bright life in front of them when they find self-acceptance and a community of supportive friends. Gender Dysphoria is not a comprehensive book, nor a substitution for medical advice. It is a guide for family and friends who are curious about the subject and need to get a handle on what is going on with someone they love who is transgender. It is also a helpful book for school-aged people who may have to report on transgender studies or even to better understand their fellow students. The book helps the reader determine what is transgenderism, the possible biological reasons for it, treatments that are possible, and the various attributes of the condition. Readers will find useful information on the topic, and hopefully receive the type of understanding that will enable the transgender peoples in their life to have a point of departure for positive discussion. The eBook discusses male-to-female transgenders, female-to-male, and the hormonal and surgical options that many of them will undertake to find some relief from their condition. It also goes into the risks associated with the various treatment options, and for this reason is also a good resource for family members who have been asked to provide emotional support to the transgender person who is considering hormone therapy and possible Sexual Reasssignment Surgery (SRS).>> Download This Book Today <