Amazon.com Review
Writing about events within living memory is one of the hardest tasks for a historian--there is too much information, too many perspectives. The authors of
Out for Good, both writers for the
New York Times, not only drew on extensive archival records but conducted nearly 700 interviews with the founders and opponents of the early gay rights movement. That they have been able to shape this unruly material into a convincing narrative is impressive enough--yet they have also managed to write one of the most dramatic and beautifully structured histories in recent years.
Starting with the almost accidental Stonewall riots in 1969 and shifting between key cities and events, they track what they describe as "the last great struggle for equal rights in American history." For homophile activists of the 1950s and early 1960s, that struggle had been about being left alone by police and politicians, but for those gathering to protest Stonewall, it was about "defining themselves to society as gay men and lesbians." While there are many memoirs and smaller studies of the era, no other book so graciously spans the 30-year period covered here. --Regina Marler
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
In this sprawling, personality-driven narrative, Clendinen and Nagourney, editorial writer and reporter, respectively, for the New York Times, attempt to cover the evolution of the gay rights movement from the Stonewall riots in 1969 to the founding of ACT UP in 1987, with a brief epilogue on Clinton's election and promises to gay activists in 1992. Adopting the almost fictionalized style popularized by Randy Shilts, the authors draw on hundreds of personal interviewsAwith major gay rights activists and those who have led anti-gay crusadesAas well as gay and mainstream press accounts. Despite its ambition to make historical sense of the successes, failures and contradictions homosexuals have faced in securing gay rights, the book often falls short of conveying the complexity the material demands. While the authors show a commendable impulse to investigate such cities as Boston, Atlanta, Minneapolis and Miami, they more often focus on the standard nexus of New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Similarly, the emphasis on prominent national groups (such as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force) and legislative and judicial change, rather than on the gains won by smaller grassroots efforts, doesn't always successfully encompass the broader social and political contexts in which change occurs. While it successfully delineates major themesAsuch as the tensions between assimilationist and liberation politics, between lesbians and gay men and the inevitable backlash that occurs after political gainsAand provides a good, if overly detailed, introduction to the topic, the book lacks the nuance and political insight that would have made it the definitive social and political history it aspires to be. Agent, Kathy Robbins. Author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
