... a sprawling and enthralling history of how the gay subculture in Washington, D.C., long in shadow, emerged into the klieg lights. But it’s also a whodunit to rival anything by Agatha Christie ... These must have been harrowing existences, but their retelling makes for very good and suspenseful, if occasionally ponderous, reading ... Sifting methodically through F.B.I. files, correspondence, interview transcripts and press clippings — you can almost hear the old microfiche sheets ticking by — Kirchick holds the most dedicated persecutors, some of whom were themselves in the closet, to scathing account ... There’s vital material in each section, and even the trivia seems resonant ... a luxurious, slow-rolling Cadillac of a book, not to be mastered in one sitting. It would be best read at the violet hour with a snifter of brandy in a wood-paneled library, one of those with a rolling ladder to bring down some of the faded midcentury best-sellers resurfaced in these pages...It’s also a Baedeker of important places (map included) ... This is overwhelmingly a gallery of the white male gaytriarchy, with lesbians and people of color mostly on the sidelines. And Kirchick seems to run out of gas toward the end, as the gay situation improves. Though he addressed the defeat of the Defense of Marriage Act in a triumphalist essay for The Atlantic in 2019 that drew ire from some on the left, there’s only the briefest mention of it here; nothing about the presidential candidacy and subsequent cabinet appointment of Pete Buttigieg; little about the rise of the L.G.B.T.Q. rainbow. But as an epic of a dark age, complex and shaded, Secret City is rewarding in the extreme.
... engrossing, important ... an 800-page tour de force, certainly the most comprehensive history of gay Washington ever written. It’s also more than that. Tracing the strand of how the capital’s big shots treated gays across the decades, Kirchick provides a compelling account of how the bloodless, brutal Washington power game has always worked.
Kirchick chronicles these and other panics over gay influence, sometimes with a knowing wink ... has an encyclopedic quality, but focusses on a specific slice of U.S. history ... Kirchick is, in some respects, less interested in examining how the spectre of queerness haunted each Presidential Administration than he is in considering the extent to which queer cabals did, to a modest degree, exist ... the truth most clearly revealed by Kirchick’s focus on Washington is one that queer historians have emphasized for years: that change was prompted not by those in the halls of power but by activists working well outside of them ... The more typical story in Secret City is of the quietly queer politico who looks the other way when it comes to policies that devastated fellow queer people. These figures engender varying degrees of sympathy when they navigate the shadows and silences of the nineteen-forties and fifties, the era of Senator Walsh’s outing and Blick’s gay list. As the twentieth century progresses, such betrayals grow more damning ... So many of those whom Kirchick chronicles seem more compromised by their proximity to power than emboldened by it. That is also a part of the story of gay life in the United States, and Kirchick tells it well. Still, reading Secret City, one sometimes feels, perhaps inevitably, that queer history is elsewhere.
Kirchick tries to retrofit the trope to a very specific subset of the District’s famously diverse LGBTQ community, ultimately covering a bewildering amount of old ground without offering the reader much that can be called new ... Apart from notable appearances by a handful of otherwise underexplored gay and lesbian politicos, Secret City largely focuses on the pain experienced by, and at the hands of, familiar gay men like FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (who Kirchick curiously avoids identifying as homosexual), McCarthyite and Trump mentor Roy Cohn, and infamous New Right lobbyist Terry Dolan. Most gay voices, however, are drowned out by, even treated as less credible than, those of homophobic straight people: Gossip columnists, yellow journalists, embattled presidents, conniving senators, obsequious FBI agents and a rotating cast of aides all are relied upon as primary sources in a history that is not primarily theirs to tell. Kirchick promises to show us 'the wide-ranging influence of homosexuality on the nation’s capital, on the people who dwelled within it, and on the weighty matters of state they conducted.' But Secret City might more accurately be described as a surface-level glimpse at the prominence of homophobia in the federal government and the D.C. press corps, how such homophobia has long manifested as rumor and innuendo (pages and pages of which are here reproduced), the influence of such homophobia on an enormous cast of almost exclusively White gay men, and how more than a few of those men played not-insignificant roles in the GOP’s long march to the far right ... we should always welcome stories that unsettle popular narratives. At the same time, however, those seeking to unsettle such narratives should strive for the transparency and accountability so often lacking in older histories. And it’s here where “Secret City” falters. In 43 chapters and more than 650 pages of text, Kirchick rarely ventures beyond the federal government’s highest echelons, all but ignoring the fact that both the government and the District of Columbia are much bigger than whichever administration happens to be in town. Following the example of many of those featured in its pages, Secret City falls back on policies of the past to justify the exclusion of those harmed by such policies. That is, because 'weighty matters of state' have historically been conducted in rooms filled almost entirely by White men, Kirchick seems content not to ask questions about those waiting outside ... Many of the book’s weaknesses are attributable to Kirchick’s apparent aversion to common-sense conventions of language.
It is, broadly, a familiar story of the closet. But by focusing on gay men and lesbians who worked in and around the federal government, partook of Washington high society, and largely remained closeted, Kirchick offers a very different take on American LGBTQ history. Whereas many books emphasize the work of pathbreaking activists who came out of the closet and took aim at society’s homophobic norms, Secret City emphasizes those who worked inside the system—many of them Republicans who were forced to balance their hidden sexuality and their public conservatism. It is thus a history of slow assimilation, a fundamentally conservative account that endeavors to write gay men and lesbians into a triumphant story of American democracy ... really a history of the gay American conservative—a history of how gay men kept turning up in national politics and the federal government where they were least expected ... The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, which had such success pressuring the federal government to take the epidemic seriously, is mentioned nowhere...Assimilation rather than revolution is the telos toward which Secret City strives ... emphasizes not how persecution of and discrimination against gay and lesbian people have undermined American claims to equality and justice but rather how the country’s eventual embrace of LGBTQ rights is proof of the success of American liberalism...What Kirchick—along with other gay conservative writers, such as Andrew Sullivan—seems to suggest is that because it’s now possible for some queer people to assimilate successfully, it’s time for the movement to, well, move on ... highlights the extent to which gay conservatives have always occupied positions of influence, even if in decades past they were far more circumspect about their sexuality. But the experiences of these elites, who are able to navigate the halls of power—some more successfully than others—are perhaps not the best indicator of the state of gay rights or of the health of our democracy more generally. After all, the Republican Party in which Thiel and Grenell have found a home is one that not only calls for the abolition of hard-won LGBTQ rights but also increasingly questions the value of democracy itself.
Kirchick has spent a decade uncovering long-hidden stories that have been lost from history. At 800 pages, including well over 100 just for notes and sources, the scope of Secret City feels momentous ... Kirchick astutely points out that the fear of homosexuality has been a driver of presidential politics ... Throughout Secret City, Kirchick does a masterful job of conveying the flavor of homophobia in each historical era, while using impeccable research to vividly characterize the dozens of various individuals at play in these stories ... Because of this rich attention to detail, Secret City also offers a vivid chronicle of the waves of liberation and backlash that characterized the growing acceptance of LGBTQ+ rights in the 20th century.
... a lengthy, detailed, riveting history of the way in which homosexuality was perceived and treated in our government from the tenure of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the end of the 20th century ... grand in scope and always absorbing. Its focus is always on individual stories of men caught in the crossfire between their sexual orientation and official homophobia and hypocrisy. It was only by asserting themselves and seeing themselves as a community that they found a place for themselves in the seat of American power. Kirchick’s clear, journalistic style carries the reader along. Above all, he asserts, gay men have always been in places of power, but always vulnerable. Their positions depended on the ignorance or loyalty of the people around them. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to protect them.
Densely detailed, panoramic, and eye-opening ... Decades of intrigue that Kirchick lays out in vivid prose ... Secret City takes readers through the betrayals, repression, vilification, and subterfuge that defined gay life in Washington’s corridors of power from the 1930s until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Though dramatically recounting the passing decades’ broader cultural and political tides, and admirably achieving Kirchick’s stated goal of not segregating 'gay history' but integrating it into American history, the book is largely a story of individuals and the prices they paid for their secrets.
Fascinating ... This is a book rich in ironies. Some of the people who brought down gays in Washington were gay themselves ... In Secret City, James Kirchick has written a delicious page-turner that’s also an important and masterly work of American history.
[A] sweeping history ... Secret City flips a light switch on, illuminating over six decades and eleven presidential administrations, from Roosevelt to Clinton. What's shown is an epic story with a cast of thousands--well-known and forgotten, villains and victims ... Kirchick is a good storyteller, and some of the episodes, when they are not tragic or filled with cruelty, are quite entertaining ... For a work so focused on politics and politicians, Secret City is not a polemic, even though support for gay rights has for many decades been skewed toward Democratic politics.
The gays and lesbians in Kirchick's book form a rotating cast of Forrest Gumps, appearing at the center of every major political event of the latter half of the 20th century. This allows the book to serve well as a general history of the country, no small feat in a subject area where too often, major events merely serve as scene-setting and background noise. Kirchick refreshingly portrays the gay Washington underground as a parallel and central world to the seat of American power ... It is, in many ways, one of the most human works of history written this decade so far. Much like the gay community itself, the book contains people from every social class, color, personality, and profession ... The book's massive size and scope make it impossible to even list the number of fascinating characters and stories ... Never preachy, self-conscious, or boring, Secret City has raised the bar for the genre, portraying its subjects and their city in all its contradictions. I won't forget it.
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 ... 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 ... 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.
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.
In this absorbing and well-documented book, Kirchick 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 ... Kirchick diligently tracks each presidential administration from Franklin Roosevelt through Bill Clinton ... 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 ... 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 ... Not without flaws but an important addition to American history nonetheless.
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.
