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Informationen zum Autor George Chauncey is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and previously taught at Yale and the University of Chicago. He is also the author of Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality. Klappentext Gay New York brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet, where gay men were isolated, invisible, and self-hating. Drawing on a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, George Chauncey constructs a fascinating portrait of a vibrant, cohesive gay world that is not supposed to have existed. Called "monumental" (Washington Post), "unassailable" (Boston Globe), "brilliant" (Nation), and "a first-rate book of history" (New York Times), Gay New York forever changed how we think about the history of gay life in New York City, and beyond. Zusammenfassung The “monumental” ( Washington Post ), field-defining history of gay life in New York City in the early to mid-20th century Gay New York brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed in the closet, where all gay men were isolated, invisible, and ashamed. Based on years of research in diaries, letters, newspaper stories, and police reports, Chauncey describes the saloons, speakeasies, and streets where queer men gathered; the intimate parties and immense drag balls where they celebrated; the highly visible residential enclaves they built in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and Times Square; and the complex prewar sexual culture they inhabited, which did not divide men into heterosexuals and homosexuals. It offers new perspectives on the LGBT rights revolution of our time by showing that the oppression the movement attacked in the 1960s was not unchanging, but had intensified in the 1930s as a direct response to the visibility of the prewar gay world. Awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Organization of American Historians' prize for the best first book in any field of history upon its publication in 1994, Gay New York remains a revelatory account of a long-forgotten world and the most widely taught book in American LGBT history....