In recent years, San Francisco has been synonymous with gay and lesbian pride, and the various achievements of the gay and lesbian community are personified in the city by the bay. The tumultuous and ongoing struggles for this community's civil rights from the 1950s to the present are well documented, but queer culture itself goes back much further than that, in fact all the way back to the California gold rush.

Traces the history of gay men and lesbians in San Francisco, from the turn of the century, when queer bars emerged in San Francisco's tourist districts, to 1965, when a raid on a drag ball energized the gay community. Includes excerpts from oral histories of lesbians and gay men who have lived in San Francisco since the 1930s.

Intelligently written and attractively illustrated and designed, this study of gay and lesbian history culture in San Francisco begins with the cross-dressing practices of 18th-century Native Americans and continues through to the signing of municipal transgender laws in 1995 in the "Gay Capital of the World." Some 300 well-chosen black-and- white and color photos document the history (though none are sexually explicit, there is some nudity). Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

'Danny's photos are a treasured artistic record of the people who initiated a movement from within their own neighborhood, and this work links that exuberant time to the larger history of LGBT people. This book is a very welcome addition to our enduring collective memory.' - Gus Van Sant. LGBT: San Francisco is the first book dedicated to photographer Daniel Nicoletta's archive of powerful images tracing the burgeoning lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender mecca that was San Francisco in the 1970s to its present. Nicoletta is perhaps most well-known for his iconic images of Harvey Milk, one of the world's first openly gay elected officials who was assassinated by a homophobic colleague in 1978, but Nicoletta's oeuvre is also a unique insider's perspective on the years that followed Milk's death taking us through the ebullience and the pathos of the times. Introduced by a foreword by Gus Van Sant and text by Chuck Mobley, LGBT: San Francisco is a stunning photographic work that is not to

Unlike many social movements, the gay and lesbian struggle for visibility and rights has succeeded in combining a unified group identity with the celebration of individual differences. Forging Gay Identities explores how this happened, tracing the evolution of gay life and organizations in San Francisco from the 1950s to the mid-1990s.

In the late 19th century, St. Louis--America's fourth-largest city--was a hub of robust commerce and risqué entertainment. It provided an oasis for those who lived "in the shadows." Since 1764, the Gateway to the West's LGBT community has experienced countless struggles and successes, including protests, arrests, murders, celebrations, and parades. St. Louis had its own version of Stonewall in October 1969 and is the hometown of icons such as Tennessee Williams and Josephine Baker. A colorful array of activists, drag queens, leather men, artists, academics, business leaders, and everyday folks have contributed to the rich fabric of the lesbian and gay community in St. Louis.

While the words "we are everywhere" can be frequently heard at gay and lesbian political events, The Gay and Lesbian Atlas provides the first empirical confirmation of this rallying cry. Drawing on the most recent data from the U.S. Census, this groundbreaking work offers a detailed geographic and demographic portrait of gay and lesbian families in all 50 states plus the top 25 U.S. metropolitan areas. These results, presented in more than 250 full-color maps and charts, will both confirm and challenge anecdotal information about the spatial distribution and demographic characteristics of this community. It is probably no surprise that San Francisco, Key West, and western Massachusetts all host large gay and lesbian populations, but it might surprise some that Houston, Texas, contains one of the ten "gayest" neighborhoods in the country, or that Alaska and New Mexico have high concentrations of gay and lesbian couples in their senior populations. The Atlas is a unique and important resource for the political and public policy communities, public health officials, social scientists, and anyone interested in gay and lesbian issues