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The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk

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Randy Shilts was a great writer, his books are always a good read. This was his first, and perhaps best book. It tells the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected politician in America. I bought this book after reading the reviews of "Milk," the new movie starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk. It's a good history of how gay men were treated in America in the 1940's and 1950's, tells about Stonewall, then moves to San Francisco and the Castro, when Harvey Milk does.The Castro grew up around the time Harvey Milk first came here, started his camera store and ran for City Supervisor. Milk comes across as someone with compassion and a clear vision of what city governement should do, but also someone with a wicked sense of humor, and a sense of theatre, which makes it a fun read. He really comes alive in this book. The book goes through his assasination by a former police officer, Dan White, the candlelight procession after his death, the trial of Dan White, and subsequent "White Night Riots." A must read for anyone interested in the gay rights movement.

Author Randy Shilts was a journalist before he became a best selling author (And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 20th-Anniversary Edition, Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military). His chronicling of the life of Harvey Milk from New York to San Francisco bears witness to the everyman struggles of gay men of that period. From the arrests and harassments in bars to the ultimate victory of being the first gay man elected to United Sates office, Shilts details every aspect of Milk's life. People famous then and now supplied detailed information on the kind of human being that Harvey Milk truly was. (Mind you, this book was written in the early eighties).

Told in a quickly paced and unrelentingly thorough style, Shilts shows how an ordinary man like Milk can make a global change (all after age forty). Milk did this before he was assassinated, making his story all the more intriguing, tragic and poetic. The recent Gus Van Sant film does a great service to the novel, but Shilts is the one that truly gets under the skin of Harvey Milk and displays a man full of integrity, conviction and humility. In his reporter's style, Shilts also describes Milk's associates, friends and coworkers, pulling together the fabric of a life cut far too short. There is a great deal of inside information like Feinstein getting caught with a gun in her purse, Feinstein literally trying to keep Harvey Milk and Dan White away from each other on that fateful day and the bizarre fact that Harvey Milk recorded his obit 1 year and 9 days prior to his assassination. Of course, see the film and the documentary, but read this book to truly comprehend how an ordinary man can turn into a hero for not just a minority, but also any underdog.

For all the GLBT people in elected office, we should never forget Harvey Milk. Thankfully, this biography of Milk has just been reissued - after far too long - and now there's no excuse to not read it.

A sobering moment comes right at the beginning of this book with the author's foreword. Randy Shilts wrote his foreword in July of 1981, the same month that the New York Times reported on a strange new disease that was found in gay men. Shilts himself eventually died of AIDS. I found myself thinking about this as I read "Castro Street," wondering how Harvey Milk would have dealt with the AIDS crisis.

Both biography and cultural history, Shilts' book is a milestone. Coming out a few years before the Oscar winning documentary on Milk's life, "The Mayor of Castro Street" is the first complete telling about the man who became the first openly gay elected official in the United States. The 1970s were a time of huge changes in the gay community and Milk's election was a sign of the progress being made. It's a tragedy that it ended so quickly.

With the film about Milk's life coming out, this book is a great companion. Shilts' journalistic style is readable and, as another reviewer has stated, the book reads like a novel. This reprint includes all the photos that were part of the previous editions and, to put it bluntly, is a must read.

Harvey Milk has become, deservedly, something of a legend in the gay rights movement and in the broader history of San Francisco politics. In The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, Randy Shilts attempts to separate man from myth and then put it back together again. The result is a book which is accessible to both a casual and more academic audience.

Shilts's writing style is fresh and casual. It is almost as though the man were sitting in a room having a conversation with you. Episodes are presented as a series of stories that flow throughout the book. So for example, we learn what Milk's lover Scott was doing when he heard the news of his assassination. The writing style lends itself well to a biography and works to make Milk more "human" than might otherwise be achieved.

Shilts's writing style can be somewhat problematic, however, in that the story does not necessarily flow in a linear fashion. For the reader who is interested in the story of Milk from a conceptual or casual interest, this should not be a problem. It could be more problematic, however, for the academic reader looking for a better picture of the linear timeline. A timeline in the appendices of this book would have served this purpose well.

Perhaps one of the greatest joys of this book, however, is reading about Milk's fight in his own words. Shilts includes transcripts of some of Milk's more famous speeches in which we learn a great deal about Milk's political beliefs and his thought process in those short months immediately preceeding and during his tenure as Supervisor. These speeches, included in the appendix, should not be skipped as they will help to ground the concepts discussed throughout the biography.

Readers interested in the aftermath of Milk's assassination or in the politics of San Francisco since the assassination would be well-served to utilize a second reference as Shilts's writing stops in the early 1980's and a great deal has changed in that time.

The Mayor of Castro Street is a well-researched and well-told history of Harvey Milk and the movement he helped to create. It should be of particular interest to the reader interested in LGBT literature in that it has so fundamentally informed the LGBT movement since. This is one book that I believe deserves to be on everyone's shelf.

After seeing Gus Van Sant's compelling & marvelous production of 'Milk', I knew I had to read more about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician in the US. Randy Shilt's volume is a definitive account of Milk's entire life, capturing fully the personality that drove a man to soaring heights & to inspire & demonstrate to those like him (et al.) that if you aren't given rights, to go ahead & take them! Harvey even predicted his own demise, but I wonder if that was just his theatrical personality speaking rather than a genuine fear (at least it wasn't expressed in a foreboding sense).

Having lived in San Francisco off and on from 1968 through 1973, I was there for a good part of the time period covered by Randy Shilts' book, "The Mayor of Castro Street." Although I never met Harvey Milk personally, I was aware of his crusade and saw the effects of his political impact. He was a brave and courageous leader who was much more than a "gay supervisor." He cared about people, their lives, their needs, their quality of living. This book brought back a flood of memories of those days--of Haight-Ashbury, SIR, the "City" itself, and the tumultuous times that were the sixties and seventies. Much more than "just" a biography of Milk, Shilts captured the times, the places, the people, the events, and the mood. It is a classic and deserves to be on the bookshelves of every American who cares about equality, liberty, and freedom.

After seeing "Milk," I was interested to learn more about Harvey than a two-hour Hollywood movie could offer. I couldn't have been happier to discover this book and I quickly devoured it. As the subtitle suggests, this is a book that is as much about America and the gay rights movement as it is about Harvey Milk. I had little idea about the plight of homosexuals in this country and Shilts does a masterful job of painting a chilling picture. More importantly, he also provides the proverbial warts-and-all representation of a complicated individual. As much as I loved the film, it is clearly something of a hagiography. You simply can't understand the man, the movement, or the time period without reading this incredible book. I couldn't recommend it more enthusiastically.

I really enjoyed "The Mayor of Castro Street: Life and Times of Harvey Milk". It was really specific about the life of Harvey Milk from the beginning to events past the assasination. I have even let one of my fellow workers borrow it.

It reminded me of my life in San Francisco. I was there studying at the American Conservatory Theatre, and several other places around town that had acting classes or schools. In 1978 I went the ACT Summer Congress. Many people in my class also participate in the march on City Hall. I went to the Opera House to hear the memorial service. I couldn't get inside.

It was great to be reminded of his interest in theatre and opera. The book really helped me interpret the Milk assasination scene in the movie which while I appreciated seeing the opera, it was made clear by the section in the book that said that he had gone to the opera on Saturday night with the woman who was Tosca in his first opera while watching the last Tosca he saw on stage.

The day of the riot was my birthday, and I was in a play. Rehearsal got over early that night, and I went home in such a way to miss whatever activity happened at City Hall. Several people in the play went over there. We debriefed it at the next rehearsal. One of the women in the play took an active part. Her story was interesting because she was married and had a daughter. She also sange with the Gay Men's Chorus.

This book is awesome. If you beleive in civil rights, then you will love it.

This was such a fantastic book a real page turner for me. Not only is it about the life and times of Harvey Milk, which I find fascinating, but it is also a history of the LGBT movement and the politics that went with it in San Francisco. A truly well written and well done book. I am so glad that I purchased it and so glad that I read it. This book has gotten me interested in learning more about the LGBT movement. I have purchased other books because of this book. A must read.