Important, ambitious, and entertaining ... Insightful ... In chapters that center on memorable characters, some of them famous and some of them simply private civilians, Davis digs up some truly novelistic — and often truly touching — details about queer life.
Davis...centers marginal identities, whether those of nonconforming individuals or those of whole peoples whose sexualities were vilified and constrained by colonial conquest and exploitation ... Davis tells her history largely through a series of short biographical accounts of individuals, laying out her case studies with a sympathetic imagination that attempts to fill in the inevitable gaps ... Shrewd.
Well-turned and crystal clear explanations ... At times the whole project threatens to sag under all the people, stories, and facts...but Davis mostly manages to keep things humming along.
Davis draws on a wealth of scholarly and archival sources, from love letters to legal testimony, to create a surprising look at Americans’ attitudes about sex, gender, sexual identity, and erotic practices over the past 400 years.
