"Half the 14 essays in this interdisciplinary study of seventeenth- through nineteenth-century America are reprintsthough its useful to have work that appeared in academic journals collected in one place. Among original work, Ramon A. Gutierrez's revisionist perspective on Native American berdache will raise the most eyebrows: rather than exalt their same-sex spirituality, fashionable among gay liberationists and radical faeries alike, the author's theory is that they led lives of sexual ‘humiliation and endless work, not of celebration and veneration.’ Among the reprints, Caleb Crain's account of a romantic triangle among three Philadelphia men that began in 1786, culled from their diaries, is the sweetest. Several essays draw on court records dating back as far as three hundred years to unearth queer lives, while others glean an intriguing and instructive glimpse of the past through a reading of Colonial-era fiction and journalism."
Q Syndicate
"Illuminate[s] the complexity, breadth, and social impact of sexuality in history."
The Gay & Lesbian Review
"A powerful interdisciplinary compilation that will keep specialists and general readers thoroughly engaged. . . . Long Before Stonewall redirects our attention to a period of American history that for too long has been undervalued as a field for scholarly inquiry into sexuality."
Journal of the Early Republic
"Thoughtful, persuasive, solidly constructed, and likely to endure the test of time."
Choice
"An excellent introduction to the dynamic new work on sexuality in colonial and early national America, which not only expands our understanding of early America but forces us to rethink paradigms and periodizations that have long governed histories of sexuality in the U.S. A valuable contribution."
George Chauncey,author of Why Marriage?