Overall, informative and appealingly told.
With photographs and sidebars, a narrative account of the United States LGBT movement's highlights in the 20th and 21st centuries.
LGBT history before the 20th century gets only a chapterlong summary, but its powerful message shines through: "For as long as there has been human civilization, LGBT people have played a part." Subsequent chapters chronicle historical and cultural events as well as notable LGBT people, from poet Langston Hughes to "transgender superstar" Christine Jorgensen to sharp-tongued AIDS activist Larry Kramer. This is the story of people more than movements; many segments begin with an individual story ("In the fall of 1995 Kelli Peterson, a senior at East High School in Salt Lake City, turned in her paperwork for a new afterschool club: the Gay-Straight Alliance”). The portrayal of the movement as a series of personal stories creates lively and engaging prose, though it sometimes leads to oversimplification. Controversies within the movement are presented as part of the narrative, but readers are not encouraged to think critically about which side they support. Activities presented in sidebars sometimes seem thought-provoking—asking an adult about their experience with boycotts—and sometimes less so—building a "teleidoscope," a sort of kaleidoscope invented by the Mattachine Society's founder.
Overall, informative and appealingly told. (resource list, endnotes, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61373-082-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
Preaching to the choir, perhaps, but an invigorating sermon all the same.
Zinn-ian conspiracy theories, propounded engagingly and energetically by filmmaker and gadfly Stone and Cold War scholar Kuznick (History/American Univ.).
If you’ve read Howard Zinn—or if, like Jeff Lebowski, the Port Huron Statement is still current news for you—then you’ll have at least some of the outlines of this overstuffed argument. Premise 1: Though the United States may pretend to be a nice, cuddly sort of democracy, it’s the font of much trouble in the world. Premise 2: When, post-9/11, neocons began pondering why it wouldn’t be such a bad idea for the U.S. to become an imperial power, they were missing a train (or Great White Fleet) that had pulled out of the station long ago. Premise 3: We like European fascists better than Asian fascists, as evidenced by propaganda posters depicting our erstwhile Japanese foes as rats and vermin. Premise 4: War is a racket that benefits only the ruling class. Premise 5: JFK knew more than he had a chance to make public, and he was gunned down for his troubles. And so forth. Layered in with these richly provocative (and eminently arguable) theses are historical aperçus and data that don’t figure in most standard texts—e.g., the showdown between Bernard Baruch and Harry Truman (“in a colossal failure of presidential leadership”) that could only lead to a protracted struggle between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for post–World War II dominance. Some familiar villains figure in as well, notably the eminently hissable Henry Kissinger and his pal Augusto Pinochet; the luster of others whom we might want to think of as good guys dims (George H.W. Bush in regard to Gorbachev), while other bad guys (George W. Bush in regard to Saddam Hussein) get worse.
Preaching to the choir, perhaps, but an invigorating sermon all the same.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1351-3
Page Count: 784
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Intrepid explorer Lourie tackles the “Father of Waters,” the Mighty Mississippi, traveling by canoe, bicycle, foot, and car, 2,340 miles from the headwaters of the great river at the Canadian border to the river’s end in the Gulf of Mexico. As with his other “river titles” (Rio Grande, 1999, etc.), he intertwines history, quotes, and period photographs, interviews with people living on and around the river, personal observations, and contemporary photographs of his journey. He touches on the Native Americans—who still harvest wild rice on the Mississippi, and named the river—loggers, steamboats, Civil War battles, and sunken treasure. He stops to talk with a contemporary barge pilot, who tows jumbo-sized tank barges, or 30 barges carrying 45,000 tons of goods up and down and comments: “You think ‘river river river’ night and day for weeks on end.” Lourie describes the working waterway of locks and barges, oil refineries and diesel engines, and the more tranquil areas with heron and alligators, and cypress swamps. A personal travelogue, historical geography, and welcome introduction to the majestic river, past and present. (Nonfiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-56397-756-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
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