Customer Reviews

The Oldest Gay Couple in America: A Seventy-Year Journey Through Same-Sex America

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Included in Harwood's conversational memoir is first and foremost a love story of two men who lived lives as a couple before there was gay liberation, yet lived to see gay liberation come to be. Not that their lives weren't gay all along! The parties, the celebrities and the "love that dare not speak its name" mentality of America from the Depression through WWII to today. Harwood has also given us a clear insider's look of New York history, the arts and culture of several decades (with an emphasis on dance), and how the lack of money put strains on all human relationships. But what is most wonderful in Harwood's enchanting autobiography is his portrait of how all couples, gay or straight, face the same challenges, the same questions of what a relationship means, and how individuals must adjust to each other in sickness and in health through 70 years of living together. The entire story makes for entirely fascinating reading and will remain one of the best gay memoirs and gay history books available for years to come.

One can feel the love, fear, fun, and sorrow that Gean and Bruhs experienced through their lives. This was a truly heart-warming book. It strengthened my feelings for my 10-year relationship with my partner and gave me an insight to gay life "before my time". This is a great book for romantics dreaming of that illusive long-time companion. It proves it can be done!

I found the book very informative and insightful. It gives you a good feel of what it was like early in 20th Century for gay people, even in a big city like NY. It also provides thoughtful insight into fact that gay relationships are no different than heterosexual ones, except they are still not legal in most parts of the US. I enjoyed most understanding how these two wonderful men dealt with having to live in hiding and pretend to be something they were not to be accepted, to keep jobs, and even get living arrangements. There were parts that seemed to go very slow when came to operas, and the "art" part of their lives. It helped understand who they were as men, but for us who are not into that type of thing, kind of boring, and found myself moving past these parts. All in all a good read. I read it in one day.

I have just finished reading this book, "The Oldest Gay Couple in America".

Having just celebrated a forty year committed relationship with my partner, I found much in this book that parallels our own experience in the past forty years. While these people were in New York City and involved with a professional life that in no way resembles our own, there were many instances which were remarkably similar to the experiences we have had. Regardless of the environment in which we live, the human element remains the same for all of us and the difficulties and rejection we all learned to experience and cope with are as painful and damaging for the more ordinary of us as for Bruhs and Gean. An outstanding account of love and devotion through agonizing times, it often brought both laughter and tears and was a privilege to be able to read, recommded by a good friend. Thank you for publishing it and making it available to the rest of us.