Neil Miller: Out of the Past

Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present. USA 2006, 678 pp., brochure, € 18.39
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In this updated and revised edition of this classic narrative history, the author chronicles gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender lives beginning in 1869 when the concept of homosexuality was invented. This volume traces each step in gay culture since that time: from the age of Walt Whitman to the trials of Oscar Wilde and Radclyffe Hall to the Stonewall riots to the present, including frontier cowboys and Native American berdaches, women's friendships and »Boston marriages«, gay havens from Jazz Age Harlem to New York's Chelsea district, gay and lesbian life in Belle Époque Paris, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, McCarthy's America, and Castro's Cuba, and gay marriage in the States and internationally.

Charlotte Chandler: Bette Davis

USA 2006, 348 pp., hardback, € 24.89
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Bette Davis was a major force in Hollywood. Her distinctive voice, her remarkable eyes, her astonishing range and depth of caharcterization were qualities to make her one of the finest performers in film history. Drawing on extensive conversations with Bette Davis during the last decade of her life, the biographer let the great actress speak for herself. Though she owed everything to her mother, Ruthie, Bette Davis remained fascinated all her life by her hard-to-please father, who walked out on his family. She remembered the disappointment - which never left - over her father's lack of interest in her, and she believed that her resentment of him was probably a major factor in her four failed marriages. She kept putting her men in a position where they would eventually disappoint her.

Julia Briggs: Virginia Woolf

UK 2006, 528 pp., brochure, € 17.89
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Virginia Woolf is the greatest of all British women writers and one of the most influential figures in 20th-century writing. She was a novelist utterly immersed in books, wholly original, passionate, vivid and with a steely dedication to her art. Yet given that what we value about Woolf's life is her great novels, most writing about her still tends to revolve around her social life and the fascinating planet of the Bloomsbury set. The author of this biography puts the writing back absolutely at the centre of Woolf's life, and reads that life through her books, using the novels themselves to create this biography. Using Woolf's own matchless commentary on the creative process through her letters, diaries and essays, the author has produced a picture of an artist at full stretch.

Jin Xing, Catherine Texier: Shanghai Tango

Mein Leben als Soldat und Tänzerin. Dt.v. Anne Spielmann. D 2006, 223 S., geb., € 20.51
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1967 als Junge in der mandschurischen Provinz geboren, ist Jin Xing der einzige männliche Nachkomme seiner aus Korea stammenden Familie. Der ganze Stolz der Familie bündelt sich in seiner Person. Doch das heile Bild gerät ins Wanken, als der Junge mit einem Hungerstreik die Zustimmung seiner Eltern zum Eintritt in eine Armeeschule, der eine Tanzausbildung angeschlossen ist, erzwingt. In den Militärjahren spürt Jin Xing, dass er im falschen Körper steckt. Der Tanz wird zum Instrument, um die fremde Hülle abzusprengen. Mit 17 Jahren wird Jin Xing Oberst der Volksbefreiungsarmee und gehört bereits zu den besten Tänzern Chinas. Während mehrerer Auslandsaufenthalte reift in ihm die Idee zur Geschlechtsumwandlung, die er mit 28 durchführen lässt. Jin Xing ist der erste anerkannte Transsexuelle Chinas. Gleichsam tut die Geschlechtsumwandlung ihrer Karriere keinen Abbruch. Im Gegenteil: die Tänzerin ist selbst in ihrem Heimatland so beliebt wie nie zuvor.

Greg Louganis: Breaking the Surface

USA 2006, 306 pp., brochure, € 14.49
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Revised update of the 1995 bestselling autobiography of athlete, four-time Olympic gold medalist, and gay role model, Greg Louganis: he won back-to-back double gold medals at the 1984 and 1988 Olympics, and his amazing physique and handsome face should have made him a media superstar. Yet Louganis's struggles with self-doubt lack of confidence held him back personally and professionally. He only achieved real happiness after coming out as an HIV-positive gay man. In this autobiography, he also discusses his early struggles with adoption and abuse, his late-detected dyslexia, and prejudice toward his dark skin coloring. His newfound celebrity led to drinking and drugs, and intensified the difficulties he was having in his relationships.

Paul Levy (ed.): The Letters of Lytton Strachey

UK 2005, 698 pp., brochure, € 25.99
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Critic, intellectual, gossip and sexual libertine who towered over the early twentieth-century literature, Lytton Strachey once referred to many of the letters in the collection as »a parcel of dynamite!«. And rightly so: his profilic output is shot through with an acerbic wit and sardonic humor and offers a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of his secret life, including his friendship with luminaries such as Virginia Woolf, Dora Carrington and John Maynard Keynes as well as his lover, Roger Senhouse. Spanning Strachey's lifelong letter-writing carreer, Paul Levy's selection offers an insider's view of the Bloomsbury group and throws new light on its members, their relationships and their influence, which continues to resonate to this day.

Jens Bisky: Geboren am 13. August

Der Sozialismus und ich. D 2006, 255 S., pb, € 8.12
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Jens Bisky, Jahrgang 1966, war in seiner Jugend überzeugter FDJ-Agitator - doch nachts traf er immer wieder Klassenfeinde. Später war er Offizier der NVA, was ihn als Schwulen nicht davon abhielt, seine Nächte in den einschlägigen Bars Ostberlins zu verbringen. Er war mit den Künstlern befreundet, die den Film »Coming Out« drehten, und als er nach dessen Premiere am 9. November 1989 aus dem Kino kam, war zu aller Überraschung die Grenze zum Westen offen. Und als die Mauer endgültig gefallen war, stellte Jens Bisky überrascht fest, wie gut er auf den Kapitalismus vorbereitet war. Ein schonungsloser Rückblick von beklemmenden bis tragikomischen Erfahrungen und ein Abschied auf eine Jugend nach Plan, mit viel Humor packend geschrieben.

Jack Fritscher: Some Dance to Remember

USA 2005, 439 pp., brochure, € 26.70
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This memoir novel of San Francisco in the 1970s and the early 1980s is one classic of gay literature, seen from the perspective of an eyewitness. This epic of San Francisco's Castro seethes with sex, drugs, panic, and passionate characters: a gay writer, a drop-dead gorgeous bodybuilder, a cabaret singer, a Vietnam vet, a Hollywood bitch, and a rough-trade porn mogul. Narrator Magnus Bishop channels Ryan O'Hara, a writer pioneering a tell-all voice in the emerging subculture of gay amagzines. When Ryan meets Quentin Crisp's »perfect man« in Kick Sorensen, lust and politics collide. Steroids rule Castro Street. Gender fascism divides queens versus clones into a gay civil war over correct queer identity. White assassinates the gay Mayor Harvey Milk. Gay rioters burn City Hall. Ryan, romancing the morphing trickster Kick, cruises through nightclubs, ecstatic sex, and leather rituals in legendary bathhouses.