Charles Kaiser is the author of The Gay Metropolis, the landmark history of gay life in America, which has just been published in a new, updated edition by Grove. An excerpt from the new edition appeared in The New York Observer.

He spoke to Stephen Colbert about his book. To watch the interview, click here.

The Gay Metropolis

This compelling social and political history begins with World War II, when the United Stars Army acted as the “great, secret, unwitting engine of gay liberation in America” — by creating the largest concentration of gay men and lesbians inside a single institution since the founding of the republic.

By melding the personal stories of people as famous as Leonard Bernstein and as little known as Sandy Kern, a Brooklyn girl who first heard the word “lesbian” when a neighbor spied her with her arm around her girlfriend at the end of a wartime blackout, Kaiser provides his readers with the sights, sounds, scents, thoughts and feelings of gay life in America since 1940. He also analyses the most significant social and political events to shape gay culture — everything from the original production of “West Side Story” (the creation of four gay, Jewish men) to the United States Supreme Court’s landmark decision, Lawrence v. Texas, in 2003, the most important legal victory in the history of the gay movement in America.

The book also includes:

Newsweek called it “required reading.” The Sunday Times of London said it was “absolutely mesmerizing.”

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Lambda Literary Award winner.

You’re welcome to read the introduction to The Gay Metropolis.
You can purchase a copy of the new edition from Amazon.
You can search inside The Gay Metropolis here.

1968 In America

First published in 1988, 1968 In America remains one of the definitive texts about the culture and politics of the ’60’s. “It is about the people of all ages who believed that fundamental change was possible and necessary in America in 1968, and about the culture that shaped that conviction.” (From the introduction.)

A compelling work of popular history, is it used in college courses across the country. The book covers the presidential campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy in depth, as well as the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., the riots at Columbia University in the spring of 1968, and the eruptions in the streets outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Bob Dylan granted an exclusive interview for this book. 1968 In America includes extensive material about everyone from the Beatles to John Hammond, the greatest musical talent scout of the 20th Century, who discovered everyone from Billie Holiday and Aretha Franklin to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. It also covers everything from the Tet Offensive, which transformed America’s attitude toward Vietnam, to the C.I.A’s extensive experiments with LSD. (The intelligence agency called the drug a “potential new agent for conventional warfare.”)

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called 1968 “a splendidly evocative account of a historic year — a year of tumult, of trauma, and of tragedy.”

You’re welcome to read the introduction to 1968 In America.
To read the chapter of 1968 In America about the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968 go here.
You can purchase a copy of 1968 In America from Amazon.
You can search inside 1968 in America here.

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