Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 - Tapa blanda

Winner of the 1994 "Los Angeles Times" Book Prize for history, this book challenges the conventional wisdom that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet. Based on years of research and access to private documents, including the diaries of gay man living in New York at the turn of the century, the author looks at a gay world which was not supposed to have existed. In his investigation of New York city, the gay capital of America for nearly a century, George Chauncey recreates the saloons, speakeasies and cafeterias where gay men gathered, describes the intimate parties and immense drag balls where they celebrated, and reconstructs the codes of dress, speech and style gay man developed to recognize and communicate with one another. Above all, the book shows that our most intimate sexual identities are stunningly recent creations. It depicts a complex pre-war sexual culture in which men were not divided into homosexuals and heterosexuals but into fairies, wolves, queers and "normal" men, in a society in which sexual normality was not defined by exclusive heterosexuality.

An award-winning book that will change for ever the way we think about the gay past.

Based on years of research and access to a rich trove of public and private documents, including the diaries of gay men living in New York at the turn of the century, 'Gay New York' is a compelling investigation of a gay world that was not supposed to have existed.

"'Gay New York' is a triumph – a masterpiece of historical scholarship, social analysis and critical imagination. Chauncey's prodigious archival research recovers for us, in brilliant and fascinating detail, the once vibrant and now vanished world that flourished in New York City and elsewhere, during the fifty years before the outbreak of the Second World War. This book will change for ever the way we think about the evolution of sex and society in the United States, and it will have a lasting impact on both our theories and our histories of sexuality."
DAVID M. HALPERIN, 'Gay and Lesbian Quarterly' and Professor of Literature, MIT

"A monumental and multi-layered work, and a vital achievement in redefining and reassessing gay history ... Full of interesting revelations and insights."
WASHINGTON POST

"An electrifying account of the most historically important gay community in America."
JOHN BOSWELL, author of 'The Marriage of Likeness'

"A fascinating inventory of a world so long forgotten that it is almost universally believed to have never existed."
NEW YORKER

"Chauncey not only splendidly recreates this little-known chapter of New York history, but also produces an exquisite story, combining extensive original historical research with captivating narrative passages."
LOS ANGELES TIMES

"Chauncey's genius here is the way he combines real lives and theory."
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