100 books like The Invention of Heterosexuality

By Jonathan Ned Katz,

Here are 100 books that The Invention of Heterosexuality fans have personally recommended if you like The Invention of Heterosexuality. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest

Jeff Stookey Author Of Acquaintance

From my list on revealing LGBT life in the early 20th century.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve known all my life that I am gay. At age 50 I decided to try my hand at writing. After an image of two men kissing in a 1920s vehicle landed in my head, I began writing my Medicine for the Blues trilogy (Acquaintance is book one). But knowing nothing about LGBT history, I began a deep dive into gay and lesbian history, into the history of Portland and Oregon, into the era of the 1920s, the KKK, Prohibition, Freud, eugenics, and more. During 20 years of writing the trilogy, I’ve read dozens of books that roiled through my imagination and the information spilled out in the story.

Jeff's book list on revealing LGBT life in the early 20th century

Jeff Stookey Why did Jeff love this book?

This book was essential background for my trilogy. What I like most is its descriptions of the different sex practices of the different homosexual “types”—lower/working class men (“trade” or “wolves”) preferred anal intercourse with boys or young men (“punks” or “lambs”); upper class men preferred oral sex with “queens” or “fairies.” Focusing on the Pacific Northwest of the USA, Boag does great research into criminal and court records, which were some of the only records of these “aberrant” activities. A bonus is Boag’s tracing of the influence of the Oscar Wilde trial (1895) on attitudes in the Western USA.

By Peter Boag,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Same-Sex Affairs as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

At the turn of the twentieth century, two distinct, yet at times overlapping, male same-sex sexual subcultures had emerged in the Pacific Northwest: one among the men and boys who toiled in the region's logging, fishing, mining, farming, and railroad-building industries; the other among the young urban white-collar workers of the emerging corporate order. Boag draws on police logs, court records, and newspaper accounts to create a vivid picture of the lives of these men and youths - their sexual practices, cultural networks, cross-class relations, variations in rural and urban experiences, and ethnic and racial influences.


Book cover of Jeb and Dash: A Diary of Gay Life, 1918-1945

Jeff Stookey Author Of Acquaintance

From my list on revealing LGBT life in the early 20th century.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve known all my life that I am gay. At age 50 I decided to try my hand at writing. After an image of two men kissing in a 1920s vehicle landed in my head, I began writing my Medicine for the Blues trilogy (Acquaintance is book one). But knowing nothing about LGBT history, I began a deep dive into gay and lesbian history, into the history of Portland and Oregon, into the era of the 1920s, the KKK, Prohibition, Freud, eugenics, and more. During 20 years of writing the trilogy, I’ve read dozens of books that roiled through my imagination and the information spilled out in the story.

Jeff's book list on revealing LGBT life in the early 20th century

Jeff Stookey Why did Jeff love this book?

A valuable first-person account in real time describing what it was like to be gay in early 20th century USA. Jeb is well-read in the homosexuality literature of his era, from Havelock Ellis to Walt Whitman. One sympathizes with Jeb’s shame and misery in a time when being homosexual was socially unacceptable and illegal. Yet his self-pity and social ineptitude can be exasperating. In time he makes some gay friends, but he is often ambivalent toward them. Eventually he does develop some confidence and self-assertiveness. Most admirable is his love of culture (books, art, movies, stage plays, concerts) and his affection for nature (weather, plants, scenery, etc.) which he describes so exquisitely. By sloth and lack of dedication, Jeb never achieved his ambitions as a writer, but he did leave us these diaries that so well describe his singular life.

By Ina Russell (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Jeb and Dash as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

It occurred to me today with something of a shock how horrible it would be for this diary of mine to be pawed over and read unsympathetically after I am dead, by those incapable of understanding... And then the thought of the one thing even more dreadful and terrible than that - for my diary never to be read by the one person who would or could understand. For I do want it to be read - there is no use concealing the fact - by somebody who is like me, who would understand.
Jeb Alexander was a gay man…


Book cover of The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935)

Jeff Stookey Author Of Acquaintance

From my list on revealing LGBT life in the early 20th century.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve known all my life that I am gay. At age 50 I decided to try my hand at writing. After an image of two men kissing in a 1920s vehicle landed in my head, I began writing my Medicine for the Blues trilogy (Acquaintance is book one). But knowing nothing about LGBT history, I began a deep dive into gay and lesbian history, into the history of Portland and Oregon, into the era of the 1920s, the KKK, Prohibition, Freud, eugenics, and more. During 20 years of writing the trilogy, I’ve read dozens of books that roiled through my imagination and the information spilled out in the story.

Jeff's book list on revealing LGBT life in the early 20th century

Jeff Stookey Why did Jeff love this book?

This book taught me that the gay rights movement started long before Stonewall. Published in 1974, this little book opens by reporting on a Hungarian Dr. Benkert, who “devised” the term “homosexuality” in 1869 and argued for acceptance, making the 1969 Stonewall riots a 100th anniversary. In under 90 pages, the book gives a concise history of the movement against the 1871 German law that included Paragraph 175, which criminalized male homosexual acts. The authors go on to outline less robust movements in other European countries and the USA. Later chapters cover scientific inquiries, political connections with Nazism and Bolshevism, and short bios of significant movement figures.

By John Lauritsen, David Thorstad,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935) as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Revised Edition of the seminal work on the history of the Gay movement; included discussion of science, the role of women, differences in individual countries, Socialism, and Oscar Wilde. Also includes notes on five pioneers, including Walt Whitman, Sir Richard Burton, and Edward Carpenter.


Book cover of Bertram Cope's Year

Jeff Stookey Author Of Acquaintance

From my list on revealing LGBT life in the early 20th century.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve known all my life that I am gay. At age 50 I decided to try my hand at writing. After an image of two men kissing in a 1920s vehicle landed in my head, I began writing my Medicine for the Blues trilogy (Acquaintance is book one). But knowing nothing about LGBT history, I began a deep dive into gay and lesbian history, into the history of Portland and Oregon, into the era of the 1920s, the KKK, Prohibition, Freud, eugenics, and more. During 20 years of writing the trilogy, I’ve read dozens of books that roiled through my imagination and the information spilled out in the story.

Jeff's book list on revealing LGBT life in the early 20th century

Jeff Stookey Why did Jeff love this book?

While trying to learn about gay life in the 1920s, I was delighted to find this novel, “privately” published in 1919. One soon learns that Bertram Cope, who comes to teach at an undergraduate college as he works on an advanced degree, has a relationship with another young male with whom he plans to cohabit—interesting that two men could openly set up housekeeping together, even back then. Meanwhile an older matron, an aging homosexual man, and various young women hope to attract Cope’s attention. Though seen by some as a trivial social satire, Fuller’s light touch and subtle wit mask an undertone of eroticism and homosexual associations. His anonymous, authorial, third-person narrative voice is humorous and incisive, revealing his penetrating observations of social niceties and the layers of his characters’ maneuverings. Clever and understated, the book implies much that is never declared.

By Henry Blake Fuller,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bertram Cope's Year as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“Entertaining . . . eminently readable, distinguished by beautifully evoked period atmosphere and sly humor.”—The New York Times

America’s first gay novel, published in 1919.


Book cover of On Intimate Terms

Carren Strock Author Of Married Women Who Love Women and More

From my list on lesbianism and married women who love women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I believe that creativity has no boundaries and that it is only desire and determination that separate those who succeed from those who don't. I'm equally at home with a paintbrush and canvas, a needle and thread, or a hammer and nails, and am as eclectic in my writing as I am in my other interests. I'm best known for my definitive sociological study, Married Women Who Love Women and More, which began as a catharsis for myself when I realized I was gay. I'm also the author of an autobiographical how-to, an exciting mystery, a lesbian paranormal romance, a rhyming picture book, a cookbook, and a middle grade chapter book.

Carren's book list on lesbianism and married women who love women

Carren Strock Why did Carren love this book?

I found this to be an interesting read about how people are drawn to each other regardless of gender. It also discusses the special attractions between women who have been attracted to other women from an early age and those who once considered themselves heterosexual as I did.

By Beverly Burch,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked On Intimate Terms as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This provocative exploration of the internal logic of lesbian relationships argues that they are not patterned after heterosexual ones but rely on the interplay of psychosexual differences between women.


Book cover of Coming Of Age In New Jersey: College and American Culture

John C. Spurlock Author Of Youth and Sexuality in the Twentieth-Century United States

From my list on understanding American heterosexuality.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I finished my second book, which followed the life course of women in the U.S. in the early 20th century, I was left with questions and some confusion about women’s sexuality in the period. Books and magazine articles at the time obsessively discussed young women and their sexual freedom. But young women’s journals, and the psychological literature showed that publicly, young women performed a heterosexual script, but privately, and emotionally, they often remained far more comfortable with other girls and young women. Slowly it became clear that the real sexual revolution of the 20th century was the triumph of heterosexual relations and norms during the 1920s until the 1940s. 

John's book list on understanding American heterosexuality

John C. Spurlock Why did John love this book?

Michael Moffatt was a professor of anthropology when he embedded himself in the Rutgers student dorms to begin a years-long investigation of what entering adulthood meant for undergraduates at the State University of New Jersey.

Moffatt’s research included survey data, perceptive description of his own experience, and student journals (used with permission, of course). In the great tradition of social science, Moffatt identifies a range of sexual types among the young people he studied. 

By Michael Moffatt,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Coming Of Age In New Jersey as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Coming of Age is about college as students really know it and-often-love it. To write this remarkable account, Michael Moffatt did what anthropologists usually do in more distant cultures: he lived among the natives. His findings are sometimes disturbing, potentially controversial, but somehow very believable. Coming of Age is a vivid slice of life of what Moffatt saw and heard in the dorms of a typical state university, Rutgers, in the 1980s. It is full of student voices: naive and worldy-wise, vulgar and polite, cynical, humorous, and sometimes even idealistic. But it is also about American culture more generally: individualism,…


Book cover of From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America

John C. Spurlock Author Of Youth and Sexuality in the Twentieth-Century United States

From my list on understanding American heterosexuality.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I finished my second book, which followed the life course of women in the U.S. in the early 20th century, I was left with questions and some confusion about women’s sexuality in the period. Books and magazine articles at the time obsessively discussed young women and their sexual freedom. But young women’s journals, and the psychological literature showed that publicly, young women performed a heterosexual script, but privately, and emotionally, they often remained far more comfortable with other girls and young women. Slowly it became clear that the real sexual revolution of the 20th century was the triumph of heterosexual relations and norms during the 1920s until the 1940s. 

John's book list on understanding American heterosexuality

John C. Spurlock Why did John love this book?

While we can hardly think about couples today without the idea of dating, the practice was new and very edgy in the early 20th century.

Beth Bailey shows how the classic “dating and rating” complex emerged and became not just accepted but expected among middle-class couples. She also takes us through the transition to the “going steady” complex later in the century.

By Beth L. Bailey,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked From Front Porch to Back Seat as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Whether or not we've come a long way since then, this engaging study of courtship shows that at least half the fun is in reading about getting there."--'St. Louis Post-Dispatch.'


Book cover of The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home

Winnie M. Li Author Of Complicit

From my list on stories to fuel your feminist fire.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an author and activist, I use fiction as a way of exploring social issues which mean a lot to me. As a woman of color, that means writing protagonists who encounter sexism, racism, class, and geographic inequality—but who combat those injustices in inventive and heroic ways. For me, the story is always about being human: trying to understand why a character acts a certain way in a certain situation. After all, aren’t we all trying to pursue our own desires against a backdrop of societal expectations? A good storywhether fiction or non-fictionbrings these conflicts to emotional, vivid life, and roots them in a reality we can all relate to. 

Winnie's book list on stories to fuel your feminist fire

Winnie M. Li Why did Winnie love this book?

Unrecognised female labor is also the subject of this captivating non-fiction book by Hochschild, a sociologist drawing upon decades of research with fifty heterosexual couples in the Bay area. Hochschild is well-known for identifying ‘the second shift’ of childcare and domestic chores that working women often perform at home, on top of their professional commitment. This results in a rampant inequality of leisure time, and compounded with unequal pay in the workplace, exacerbates gender injustice in contemporary American society. But Hochschild also provides powerful examples of couples who counter-act this norm, while showing how individual attitudes towards gender and domestic responsibilities are influenced by class, ethnicity, and upbringing. Fascinating and illuminating. 

By Arlie Russell Hochschild, Anne Machung,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Second Shift as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An updated edition of a standard in its field that remains relevant more than thirty years after its original publication.

Over thirty years ago, sociologist and University of California, Berkeley professor Arlie Hochschild set off a tidal wave of conversation and controversy with her bestselling book, The Second Shift. Hochschild's examination of life in dual-career housholds finds that, factoring in paid work, child care, and housework, working mothers put in one month of labor more than their spouses do every year. Updated for a workforce that is now half female, this edition cites a range of updated studies and statistics,…


Book cover of Raising Stony Mayhall

C.J. Fisher Author Of Enemy Rising

From my list on zombies in a new direction.

Why am I passionate about this?

Has anyone ever said that someday they would eat you? Well, I used to be able to say no to that question too… until the day someone did. The blood-thirsty declaration of a madman reawakened a game of “what if” that my brothers and I used to play when we were kids. What if the world was swallowed in a zombie outbreak? Who would survive? Were the creatures shufflers or runners? Did they only want brains or the whole body? Was the disease airborne or only transferrable through a bite?  As mad as the man with the munchies had been, my writer’s mind couldn’t stop running with the question. What if zombies…  

C.J.'s book list on zombies in a new direction

C.J. Fisher Why did C.J. love this book?

Stony Mayhall is not like other boys. Discovered as a baby with a still heart but a moving body he is, as you may have guessed, among the undead. Nevertheless, the introspective witty youth will win your heart in the end. 

I personally love this zombie story’s deep dive into zombie politics and Stony’s anti-hero arc as he tries to discover the meaning of his own existence. And despite the heavy weight that puts on a zombie, Daryl Gergory still manages to have a lot of fun with the characters, the premise, and the plot.

By Daryl Gregory,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Raising Stony Mayhall as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From award-winning author Daryl Gregory, whom Library Journal called “[a] bright new voice of the twenty-first century,”comes a new breed of zombie novel—a surprisingly funny, vividly frightening, and ultimately deeply moving story of self-discovery and family love.
 
In 1968, after the first zombie outbreak, Wanda Mayhall and her three young daughters discover the body of a teenage mother during a snowstorm. Wrapped in the woman’s arms is a baby, stone-cold, not breathing, and without a pulse. But then his eyes open and look up at Wanda—and he begins to move.

The family hides the child—whom they name Stony—rather than turn…


Book cover of Passionate Marriage: Love, Sex, and Intimacy in Emotionally Committed Relationships

Jessica Graham Author Of Good Sex: Getting Off Without Checking Out

From my list on great sex, deep connection, and rainy day romance.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been interested in sex and relationships. When I was a teenager I was the go-to person for questions ranging from How do I give a good blowjob? to Where do I go for an abortion? to Should I say I love you before she does? I was sort of like the kid in Sex Education on Netflix. Perhaps, given the fact that I come from a long line of troubled marriages I tended to find great satisfaction in supporting others in working out their relationship woes. These days I do that as a job, along with trauma resolution, acting, writing, and nude modeling. 

Jessica's book list on great sex, deep connection, and rainy day romance

Jessica Graham Why did Jessica love this book?

I was a few years sober from alcohol, and in my first heterosexual relationship in quite a while when I read this book. Just being sober during sex, and having a penis involved, kept things interesting for about a year or so. But after a while, I wanted a deeper connection with my partner during sex, and more frequency. This proved to be challenging. One day I was crying on the phone about the state of my carnal life to a mentor and she recommended Passionate Marriage. So, I dug into the 408 pages of this relationship masterpiece. Spoiler alert, it didn’t save that relationship, but it did change my life.

It taught me about the erotic charge that can come from differentiation and how to navigate “relationship crucibles.”  I also first learned about open-eyed orgasms from Schnarch. I had been squeezing my eyes shut since I started having…

By David Schnarch,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Passionate Marriage as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Passionate Marriage has long been recognized as the pioneering book on intimate human relationships. Now with a new preface by the author, this updated edition explores the ways we can keep passion alive and even reach the height of sexual and emotional fulfillment later in life. Acclaimed psychologist David Schnarch guides couples toward greater intimacy with proven techniques developed in his clinical practice and worldwide workshops. Chapters-covering everything from understanding love relationships to helpful "tools for connections" to keeping the sparks alive years down the road-provide the scaffolding for overcoming sexual and emotional problems. This inspirational book is sure to…


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