I finished the book a few days ago and honestly I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I was hoping giving it a few days for my opinions to percolate would help enlighten me but no such luck haha 😅

I almost DNF’d at about a quarter of the way through and I think overall I’m glad I didn’t, because there were a lot of parts that were interesting and I did learn some new things about gay history. But. I think this book was both different from what I’d expected, and also seemed like it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a biography of gay historical figures, a more general overview of queer history, or a book about the shortcomings of the modern concept of gayness as an identity, and it didn’t really fully succeed at any of them. I was also a bit bothered about the inclusion of only one person of colour in the book. Given that the authors are white, and given the book’s focus on people who were controversial/morally grey at best and outright evil at worst, I wouldn’t have objected to them making the conscious decision to narrow their scope to white gays, provided they acknowledged the limitations of their research and their interpretations. But the sole inclusion of Yukio Mishima felt like a throwaway nod to diversity without the commitment to do the actual work for a well rounded representation of different ethnicities and identities to those of the authors. At the end of the book it was mentioned that it was initially a podcast, and honestly that makes a lot about it make sense. I think what would probably be fun and interesting in podcast format did not translate well to forming a coherent book. Anyway. TLDR I think I just need to start reading nonfiction that’s not written by a certain type of Cis White Gay™️ - any recommendations? 😅