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Gay Life & Culture: A World History
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Customer Reviews
Rating:  - Gay studies essential #1
This collection of intriguing articles by highly reputable academics is an seminal work, essential to anyone with an interest with identity formation or gender studies. I have used it in the field of health policy. However, there is no need to have a professional background or tertiary degree, or to be gay, to enjoy this intriguing guide through eras and societies. A great book to be enjoyed on many levels.
Buy it.
Rating: - More than a Coffee Table Book
An excellent pictorial tour through the centuries on fine paper, with easy top understand prose, and plenty of references for further research and reading.
However, I am not sure that averything should be looked at from our contemporary narrow view of what constitutes 'gay'. The term is a dis-service for men who (occasionally) like men - appreciating the beauty or the person they see. Which has nothing to do with sexual orinetation. In those terms the gay label has put everyone either in or out of a new closet.
Former centuries did not have such terms and sexual behaviour was in many ways freer and less bound to convention. it used to be the that the upper and working classes were far more libertine in their approach to personal relationships. Some of this comes though inthis tome. A laudable effort.
Rating:  - A Visual Feast, An Incredible Read
A Visual Feast, An Incredible Read
Aldrich, Robert, editor. "Gay Life and Culture". Universe Publishing, 2006.
Amos Lassen and Literary Pride
I received a book today that is one of the most beautifully laid out books I have ever seen, "Gay Life and Culture" edited by Robert Aldrich. If you are looking for the perfect holiday gift for someone special, look no further. This is it. It is a big coffee table book with a big price, $49.95, but worth every penny.
"Gay Life and Culture" is a world history of people like us. That is to say that is our story. It is lavishly illustrated with photographs and art work that reflect our history and is stunning just to browse through. Here is a one volume, contemporary history of not just gay life but Gay culture as well. It is heavily researched, having drawn on new scholarship to give us a contemporary look at all things gay going as far back as ancient Sumeria and coming as far present as the day it was published. Aldrich leaves virtually no stone unturned in his rendition of our history. He combines all of the new research, critical inquiry and reinterpretation there is on the subject and turns it all into readable prose.
Aldrich used nine different historians from nine different countries in his exploration of same sex history and the book studies relationships through the centuries while charting shifting attitudes toward homosexuality and the gradual emergence of a self identity for a homosexual community. It deals with AIDS, with same sex marriage, gay rights and civil partnerships beginning with Greece and Rome and following them to the present. The book also includes non Western cultures and gives an insight into same-sex relationships throughout history and around the globe.
We get a good look at the homoerotic poetry of Persia and learn of cross dressing women in Italy in the eighteenth century and learn of the hedonism of Berlin between-the-wars as well as the third gender concept in Asia and among native North Americans. The research comes from heretofore unlooked at letters and diaries, archives and works of art and literature.
The book also covers topics from the Old Testament--the story of David and Jonathan, the age of Confucius, the legends of Amerinds and Polynesian mahus as well as Stonewall and the golden age of American promiscuity which followed the riots, In American history there is detailed discussions of the advent of AIDS, the power of "Act Up" and the influence of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America".
This is a major contribution to understanding what makes gay life and culture so universal throughout culture and across timelines. Divided into fourteen chapters, each section deals with a particular time and place. The women are included throughout the book and the introduction by the editor lets the reader know how the book came to be and by which processes it was researched and written. Fifty bucks is a small price to pay for what you get here. Even if you just read the final chapter about "The Gay World: 1980 to the Present" you will be amazed at how much there is to learn. This book is a must have in every thinking gay man's library and a wonderful addition to our lives. Remember it when you are making up your holiday gift list. The person you give it to will be your friend forever after he receives this book.
Rating:  - Crompton's book is much better
I am assuming that most readers do not have infinite space on their bookshelves. If you want an excellent one-volume overview, the place to get it is Crompton's "Homosexuality and Civilization" -- not here.
If you want a volume filled with sumptuous pictures, may I suggest "L'Amour Bleu," a supposedly "out-of-print" book which keeps being continually reprinted?
The book under review is much weaker, in all respects.
Rating: - A mixed bag
Many books purporting to offer a history of homosexuality concentrate mainly on the last two centuries in Europe and North America. Since many readers of such books are interested in self-understanding, this bias is understandable. Unfortunately, it is supported by a mistaken theory known as Social Construction which holds, in essence, that there was no homosexuality before ca. 1870 and then only in European countries. In his introduction Robert Aldrich rightly eschews this error. His book includes important material on classical antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and non-Western civilizations.
Unfortunately, some of his authors do not follow this principle, and regurgitate the old Social Constructionist platitudes. There is also a discord concerning levels of accessibility, as some contributions are technical while others border on the simplistic.
Physically, the book is sumptious, with over 250 splendid illustrations gathered by the picture editor, the late Wendy Gay. Unfortunately, the illustrations seem to have been gathered independently of the texts, whose authors hardly ever refer to them.
In short, this book has much to offer. However, it would have benefited from a firmer editorial hand, so as to shape the contributions into a more organic whole.
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