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Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington
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Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington Paperback - 2023

by James Kirchick

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Reader reviews for Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington

From the publisher

The New York Times Bestseller
The New York Times Notable Book of 2022
Named one of Vanity Fair's "Best Books of 2022"

"Not since Robert Caro's Years of Lyndon Johnson have I been so riveted by a work of history. Secret City is not gay history. It is American history."
--George Stephanopoulos

Washington, D.C., has always been a city of secrets. Few have been more dramatic than the ones revealed in James Kirchick's Secret City.

For decades, the specter of homosexuality haunted Washington. The mere suggestion that a person might be gay destroyed reputations, ended careers, and ruined lives. At the height of the Cold War, fear of homosexuality became intertwined with the growing threat of international communism, leading to a purge of gay men and lesbians from the federal government. In the fevered atmosphere of political Washington, the secret "too loathsome to mention" held enormous, terrifying power.

Utilizing thousands of pages of declassified documents, interviews with over one hundred people, and material unearthed from presidential libraries and archives around the country, Secret City is a chronicle of American politics like no other. Beginning with the tragic story of Sumner Welles, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's brilliant diplomatic advisor and the man at the center of "the greatest national scandal since the existence of the United States," James Kirchick illuminates how homosexuality shaped each successive presidential administration through the end of the twentieth century.

Cultural and political anxiety over gay people sparked a decades-long witch hunt, impacting everything from the rivalry between the CIA and the FBI to the ascent of Joseph McCarthy, the struggle for Black civil rights, and the rise of the conservative movement. Among other revelations, Kirchick tells of the World War II-era gay spymaster who pioneered seduction as a tool of American espionage, the devoted aide whom Lyndon Johnson treated as a son yet abandoned once his homosexuality was discovered, and how allegations of a "homosexual ring" controlling Ronald Reagan nearly derailed his 1980 election victory.

Magisterial in scope and intimate in detail, Secret City will forever transform our understanding of American history.

Details

  • Title Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington
  • Author James Kirchick
  • Binding Paperback
  • Pages 864
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Holt Paperbacks
  • Publication date 2023-05-16
  • ISBN 9781250871466 / 1250871468
  • Weight 1.75 lbs (0.79 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.2 x 6.19 x 1.5 in (23.37 x 15.72 x 3.81 cm)
  • Themes
    • Chronological Period: 20th Century
    • Cultural Region: Mid-Atlantic
    • Geographic Orientation: District of Columbia
    • Locality: Washington, D.C.
    • Sex & Gender: Gay
    • Sex & Gender: Lesbian
    • Topical: Lgbt
  • Category History - U.S.

About the author

James Kirchick has written about human rights, politics, and culture from around the world. A columnist for Tablet magazine, a writer at large for Air Mail, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, he is the author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age. Kirchick's work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, and The Times Literary Supplement. A graduate of Yale with degrees in history and political science, he resides in Washington, DC.

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Secret City : The Hidden History of Gay Washington
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Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington
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Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington

by Kirchick, James

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9781250871466 / 1250871468
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Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington

Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington

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Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington
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Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington

by Kirchick, James

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9781250871466 / 1250871468
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Holt Paperbacks, 2023-05-16. paperback. New. 6.20x1.50x9.15. Buy with confidence. Excellent Customer Service & Return policy.
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Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington
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Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington

by Kirchick, James

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9781250871466 / 1250871468
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Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington
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Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington

by Kirchick, James

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9781250871466 / 1250871468
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