Why am I passionate about this?

I came out as gay in the 1950s. I was a literary teenager, starved for the history of those who came before me. As I learned, there were no such books. As a Ph.D. candidate in the 1960s, I thought about writing a dissertation on a gay subject; but “homosexuality” was still “the love that dare not speak its name.” However, the 1970s saw a “gay revolution”; and finally, as an academic in those new times, I was able to write and publish about what had so long been forbidden. My first book, Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present, was followed by a half-dozen other books on LGBTQ history.


I wrote

The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle

By Lillian Faderman,

Book cover of The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle

What is my book about?

The Gay Revolution traces the history of LGBTQ America from the mid-twentieth century to today. How did we go from…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams

Lillian Faderman Why did I love this book?

Katz has done yeoman’s work in reconstructing the little-known story of Chawa Zloczewer, an immigrant who came to America in 1912, reinvented herself as Eve Adams, and lived the bohemian life of an anarchist and a lesbian. In the years after World War I, Adams was the proprietor of lesbian tearooms and literary salons in Chicago and Greenwich Village. Her radical politics, lesbian life, and publication in 1925 of a book she titled Lesbian Love led to her unrelenting persecution by the young J. Edgar Hoover (then head of the forerunner to the FBI). She was deported in 1927 and died in Auschwitz in 1943. A fascinating piece of lesbian history.   

By Jonathan Ned Katz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“On these pages, Eve Adams rises up, loves, rebels—her times, eerily resembling our own.” —Joan Nestle, cofounder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives and author of A Restricted Country

• 2022 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist

Historian Jonathan Ned Katz uncovers the forgotten story of radical lesbian Eve Adams and her long-lost book Lesbian Love 

Born Chawa Zloczewer into a Jewish family in Poland, Eve Adams emigrated to the United States in 1912,took a new name, befriended anarchists, sold radical publications, and ran lesbian-and-gay-friendly speakeasies in Chicago and New York. Then, in 1925, Adams risked all to write and publish a book…


Book cover of The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government

Lillian Faderman Why did I love this book?

 Johnson was among the first historians to demonstrate that the McCarthy-era witch hunts of gay and lesbian federal employees were as virulent and obsessive as the witch hunts of suspected communists. The merciless persecution of government workers suspected of being homosexual led to tragedies of ruined lives and suicides. But, as Johnson shows, it also helped politicize the victims, making them aware of themselves as a gay and lesbian community that must fight for civil rights.

By David K. Johnson,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Lavender Scare as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Cold War America, Senator Joseph McCarthy enjoyed tremendous support in the fight against what he called atheistic communism. But that support stemmed less from his wild charges about communists than his more substantiated charges that "sex perverts" had infiltrated government agencies. Although now remembered as an attack on suspected disloyalty, McCarthyism introduced "moral values" into the American political arsenal. Warning of a spreading homosexual menace, McCarthy and his Republican allies learned how to win votes. Winner of three book awards, "The Lavender Scare" masterfully traces the origins of contemporary sexual politics to Cold War hysteria over national security. Drawing…


Book cover of The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America

Lillian Faderman Why did I love this book?

Cervini’s biography of Frank Kameny shows that gay militancy began years before the iconic riots at the Stonewall Inn. In 1965, Kameny led pickets for gay civil rights in front of the White House and the State Department. He was soon teaching people who lost their jobs because they were “homosexual” how to fight and win in the courts. Understanding that as long as homosexuals were considered sick, gay people would never be granted civil rights, Kameny organized the first protests against the American Psychiatric Association that led to the declassification of “homosexuality” as a mental disorder. Cervini situates Frank Kameny in his rightful place as the father of America’s first militant gay movement. 

By Eric Cervini,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Deviant's War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY. INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER. 
 
New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Winner of the 2021 Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction. One of The Washington Post's Top 50 Nonfiction Books of 2020.  
 
From a young Harvard- and Cambridge-trained historian, the secret history of the fight for gay rights that began a generation before Stonewall. 
In 1957, Frank Kameny, a rising astronomer working for the U.S. Defense Department in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after…


Book cover of Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community

Lillian Faderman Why did I love this book?

First published in 1993, Kennedy and Davis focus on working-class women who were part of the butch-femme lesbian bar culture in Buffalo, New York from the 1930s to the 1960s. Through 45 oral histories, Kennedy and Davis allow their subjects—Black, white, and Native American—to speak poignantly for themselves. They help the authors argue that far from emulating traditional heterosexual relationships (which had been an accusation often hurled at butch-femme couples), these women were pioneers of resistance; and that far from living lonely lives (drowning in a “well of loneliness”) they formed a vibrant community.  

By Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Madeline D. Davis,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold traces the evolution of the lesbian community in Buffalo, New York from the mid-1930s up to the early 1960s. Drawing upon the oral histories of 45 women, it is the first comprehensive history of a working-class lesbian community. These poignant and complex stories show how black and white working-class lesbians, although living under oppressive circumstances, nevertheless became powerful agents of historical change. Kennedy and Davis provide a unique insider's perspective on butch-fem culture and argue that the roots of gay and lesbian liberation are found specifically in the determined resistance of working-class lesbians.

This…


Book cover of Female Husbands

Lillian Faderman Why did I love this book?

Manion traces the history—from the colonial era to the early twentieth century—of people assigned female at birth who lived their lives as men. As the author shows, American and British history has been replete with such individuals, long before “transgender” became a term. If found out, they risked public humiliation, whippings, and imprisonment. Manion sets their lives in the context of their times, recreating their compelling stories through court records and newspaper accounts.  

By Jen Manion,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Female Husbands as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Long before people identified as transgender or lesbian, there were female husbands and the women who loved them. Female husbands - people assigned female who transed gender, lived as men, and married women - were true queer pioneers. Moving deftly from the colonial era to just before the First World War, Jen Manion uncovers the riveting and very personal stories of ordinary people who lived as men despite tremendous risk, danger, violence, and threat of punishment. Female Husbands weaves the story of their lives in relation to broader social, economic, and political developments in the United States and the United…


Explore my book 😀

The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle

By Lillian Faderman,

Book cover of The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle

What is my book about?

The Gay Revolution traces the history of LGBTQ America from the mid-twentieth century to today. How did we go from being criminals, crazies, sinners, and subversives to having the right to marry and to serve openly in the military? What accounts for the remarkable progress from the days when a person suspected of homosexuality could be fired from a job or booted out of college to the present when a “homophobe” is almost as much a social pariah as a racist? How did we become (almost) first-class American citizens, and what remains to be done?  

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By Elana Gomel,

Book cover of Girl of Light

Elana Gomel Author Of Nine Levels

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Elana's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

A girl of Light in a world of darkness.

In Svetlana's country, it’s a felony to break a mirror. Mirrors are conduits of the Voice, the deity worshiped by all who follow Light. The Voice protects humans of MotherLand from the dangers that beset them on all sides: an invading army of wolf-headed men on their borders and the infectious, ever-evolving, zombie-like Enemy that plagues them at home. When Svetlana meets Andrei, a traumatized and amnesiac soldier from another war, she embarks on a harrowing journey of adventure and self-discovery that leads her to question everything she was taught to…

Girl of Light

By Elana Gomel,

What is this book about?

A voice through Svetlana's mirror guides her beloved MotherLand from behind its' electric tower. The war with Wulfstan is not going as well as Sveta and her parents hope, but Sveta trusts the Voice. When her best friend Tattie goes missing, and Sveta saves Andrei, a soldier in summer uniform in the dead of winter, it takes Sveta through a crucible of Light, doubt, and back to the altar of true belief. Girl of Light unravels Sveta's beloved MotherLand in a war-torn adventure through monsters, missing eyes and broken mirrors.

Girl of Light is a dark fantasy with a Slavic…


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