Secret City

September 1, 2021

In Lincoln and the Fight for Peace, CNN anchor Avlon addresses President Abraham Lincoln's conciliatory vision regarding the post-Civil War era, aiming to show how it influenced activists from Nelson Mandela to Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. (75,000-copy first printing). The New York Times best-selling Baime's White Lies profiles Black civil rights activist Walter F. White, who figured largely in the Harlem Renaissance and the NAACP while leading a dual life as a reporter investigating racial violence in the South because he could pass for white (40,000-copy first printing). Chapin, The President's Man, here recalls his years as personal aide, special assistant, and finally deputy assistant to President Richard Nixon as the 50th anniversary of Watergate looms. In African Founders, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Fischer shows that enslaved Africans brought with them skills ranging from animal husbandry to ethics that profoundly shaped colonial and early U.S. society (100,000-copy first printing). A conservative gay reporter who has received awards from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, Kirchick dug through multitudinous declassified documents and interviewed over 100 people to write Secret City, which profiles the impact of the LGBTQ+ community on Washington, DC, politics since Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. A multi-award-winning journalist and professor emeritus at Champlain College, Randall intends to show that not only were The Founders' Fortunes pledged in support of the Revolutionary War but that concerns about their fortunes helped prompt it. A professor of art crime at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Thompson is an acknowledged expert in the national debate surrounding Smashing Statues--should controversial public monuments be pulled down or allowed to stand? Journalist/author Thompson ( Kickflip Boys) uses newly released records to tell the story of Patrick and Bridget Kennedy, who fled Ireland's Great Famine for Boston, MA, and became The First Kennedys, founders of a political dynasty.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 28, 2022
From the 1940s to the 1990s, “America’s global preeminence transformed what had been a private vice into a public obsession as homosexuality assumed an ideological cast and treacherous, world-historical significance,” according to this ambitious history. Tablet columnist Kirchick (The End of Europe) examines the forced closeting of LGBTQ government officials from the FDR administration through the Bill Clinton era, detailing how rumors that State Department official Sumner Welles (whom Winston Churchill credited with coining the phrase “No comment” in the 1940s) propositioned male train porters when drunk sowed the seeds for the Lavender Scare, which resulted in government employees losing their jobs due to belief that they could be easy targets for blackmail and coercion by foreign enemies. The official exclusion of gay people from national security access lasted until Bill Clinton overturned an Eisenhower-era executive order in 1995, Kirchick notes. Extensive research, including original interviews, delves into rumors that Alger Hiss was falsely accused of espionage because he rejected Time magazine editor Whittaker Chambers’s sexual advances and reveals that the Iran-Contra affair was facilitated by a conservative “gay network.” Despite losing momentum and depth in its coverage of the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations, this is a valuable and often fascinating revision of U.S. political history.

March 1, 2022
A comprehensive history of key political power struggles and controversies of the past century, focused on those Americans "whose obscurity was the consequence of their being forced to hide." In this absorbing and well-documented book, Kirchick, author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age, engagingly draws attention to a variety of gay histories that have been largely lost to mainstream history. At the same time, he shows how Americans' deep-seated fear of homosexuality was often amplified by political leaders. "Nothing posed a more potent threat to a political career, or exerted a more fearsome grip on the nation's collective psyche, than the love expressed between people of the same sex," writes the author. "While America fought fascism, political and cultural leaders associated [homosexuality] with the nation's Nazi enemies. During the Cold War, voices from across the political spectrum linked it with communism." Kirchick diligently tracks each presidential administration from Franklin Roosevelt through Bill Clinton. The author discusses the sexual scandal that would force Sumner Welles, FDR's undersecretary of state, out of office; the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic during the Reagan and Bush administrations; and the policies of the Clinton administration, which were more open-minded despite the ill-advised "don't-ask, don't-tell" policy. Throughout, Kirchick sheds light on the stories of several individuals whose efforts bravely contributed to gradual acceptance and an expansion of opportunities for gay Americans, including civil rights organizer Bayard Rustin and John Ford, Reagan's deputy assistant agriculture secretary. While ambitious and convincing, the narrative goes slack in certain areas; some readers may get the sense that the book would have been better presented as a multivolume history, affording Kirchick the opportunity to examine specific elements without losing momentum. In particular, the early chapters--about how the fear of homosexuality became entangled with the fear of communist influence--are worth further study. Though overlong, the book offers countless illuminating stories that have been grossly underserved in past political histories. The author also includes a "historical map of gay Washington" and a cast of characters. Not without flaws but an important addition to American history nonetheless.

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Starred review from February 1, 2022

Gay history is American history. But for much of American history, particularly in 20th-century Washington, DC, being gay was something hidden, something secret. That is Kirchick's (The End of Europe) thesis as he relays the stories of gay men and women who existed and persisted while working in every presidential administration from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's through Bill Clinton's. The blacklisting of communists, the battle for civil rights, and the birth of the American conservative movement can trace a foundation back to gayness and how it was viewed, Kirchick maintains. This astonishing history, based on thousands of recently declassified documents, tells a bold story of how gay Americans, against great odds, made a lasting impact on the U.S. government. Chapters move chronologically through 11 presidential administrations and chronicle the federal officials and civil servants working behind the scenes, and sometimes in the public eye, who received scrutiny because of hearsay or rumor about their sexuality. Kirchick's writing is compelling throughout, and the fast pace of his story makes a lengthy book accessible for a wide audience. The "cast of characters" at the beginning of the book is a bonus. VERDICT Readers who enjoy inside-the-Beltway thrillers or American history, particularly regarding civil rights, will have a common interest in this fascinating and comprehensive work.--Keith Klang

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 1, 2022
For anyone who ever served in government, President Biden's appointment of Pete Buttigieg as the first openly gay cabinet member was, as Joe himself would say, "a big f-ing deal." Throughout most of the country's history, the phrase "gay government employee" was an oxymoron. Not that there weren't gays in government, of course, just that the civil-service closet was cavernous. Careers were threatened and destroyed based on the slightest allegations, fueled by people whose motivations ranged from casual to calculated. Prolific journalist Kirchick chronicles the decades-long evolution of the LGBTQ administrative community, from subversive political extortion during the FDR years to groundbreaking if inadequate same-sex legislation under Bill Clinton. What emerges is a web of informants and blackmailers, often abetted by political operatives at the highest levels, all determined to expose what was considered "deviant" behavior that could topple administrations. While Kirchick's analysis of political skulduggery throughout earlier presidencies is microscopic and keenly researched, the proffering of positive changes beginning with George H. W. Bush's term is insubstantial by comparison. Still, Kirchick's history is an inspiring and overdue tribute to the brave individuals who fought for acceptance in a city and government long pitted against them.

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