This informative, engaging account of GLBTQ lives in the United States over the past 100-plus years documents critical history while providing a fascinating look at how social and political attitudes have influenced and been influenced by individual lives. Alsenas opens his essential work with a look at relationships and attitudes prior to the twentieth century. He then embarks on a chronological account of GLBTQ culture, which both reflected and responded to social attitudes as well as political advances and frustrations in the quest for equality under the law. As he looks at the twentieth and the first part of the twenty-first centuries, his profile includes the earliest organized activism and sweeping public celebrations of pride that are commonplace in large cities today. He also notes how key events spurred new modes of activism, which ranged from quiet quests for acceptance and change from within the social structure to angry wake-up calls for action, especially in response to the AIDS crisis. His volume offers a perspective on sweeping social change while offering glimpses of individual lives that are both testament to how far GLBTQ visibility and activism have come, and how far our society and our laws still need to go to provide equal rights and safety for all. (Age 12 and older)

Milestones of gay and lesbian life in the United States are brought together in the first-ever nonfiction book published specifically for teens.

Profusely illustrated with archival images, the groundbreaking Gay America reveals how gay men and women have lived, worked, and loved for the past 125 years. Gays and lesbians play a very prominent role in American life today, whether grabbing headlines over political gains, starring in and being the subject of movies and television shows, or filling the streets of nearly every major city each year to celebrate Gay Pride. However, this was not always the case, and this book charts their journey along with the history of the country.

First touching on colonial times, the book moves on to the Victorian period and beyond, including such historical milestones as the Roaring 20s, the Kinsey study, the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s, the Beat generation, Stonewall, disco, AIDS, and present-day battles over gay marriage. Providing a sense of hope mixed with pride, author Linas Alsenas demonstrates how, within one century, gay women and men have gone from being socially invisible to becoming a political force to be reckoned with and proud members of the American public living openly and honestly. The book includes a bibliography and an index."