The Deviant's War
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4.7 • 15 Ratings
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
"Vikas Adam draws the listener in, expertly narrating Cervini's work, which charts the beginning of the gay rights movement in the United States...Vikas Adam does an excellent job lending unique voices to real historical figures." -- AudioFile Magazine
A Publishers Weekly most anticipated spring book
From a young Harvard- and Cambridge-trained historian, the secret history of the fight for gay rights that began a generation before Stonewall.
In 1957, Frank Kameny, a rising astronomer working for the U.S. Defense Department in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny, like countless gay men and women before him, was promptly dismissed from his government job. Unlike many others, though, Kameny fought back.
Based on firsthand accounts, recently declassified FBI records, and forty thousand personal documents, Eric Cervini's The Deviant's War unfolds over the course of the 1960s, as the Mattachine Society of Washington, the group Kameny founded, became the first organization to protest the systematic persecution of gay federal employees. It traces the forgotten ties that bound gay rights to the Black Freedom Movement, the New Left, lesbian activism, and trans resistance. Above all, it is a story of America (and Washington) at a cultural and sexual crossroads; of shocking, byzantine public battles with Congress; of FBI informants; murder; betrayal; sex; love; and ultimately victory.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In the 1950s, hundreds of gay men and women were dismissed from jobs in the U.S. government—and this fascinating audiobook tells the story of one man who fought back. Frank Kameny was a young, Harvard-educated astronomer working for the Army Map Service when a college arrest for public indecency came to light. In response to his firing, Kameny formed the Mattachine Society, one of the country’s first prominent gay rights organizations. Historian Eric Cervini not only tells Kameny’s story but weaves him and his self-described “homophile” group into the bigger picture of the civil rights era. Although it’s exhaustively researched, with an academic’s attention to citation, The Deviant’s War feels more like an immersive and gripping pop history lesson. The book’s detailed portrait of urban gay life in the conservative ’50s and ’60s is absolutely fascinating, and narrator Vikas Adam’s skill at distinct voices gives the dialogue scenes a thrilling immediacy. This is a remarkable story of LGBTQ+ activism in the pre-Stonewall era.
