The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America [Signed and Inscribed]

Item Details

New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1997, Hardcover

First Edition, Fine in Fine dust jacket.

8vo., 404 pp. Illustrations, index, notes, bibliography. First edition. Inscribed by the author on the half-title page. 

Kaiser's "The Gay Metropolis" was, on publication, immediately recognized as the most authoritative single-volume history of modern gay life in America — a meticulously reported chronicle tracing the movement's roots back to World War II and following it decade by decade through Stonewall, the AIDS crisis, and the long fight for social and legal recognition. It was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won a Lambda Literary Award, cementing its place as a foundational text of LGBTQ+ history.

Drawing on extensive interviews with gay men and women who lived through the events described — including numerous well-known cultural figures — Kaiser builds a narrative that is at once rigorously researched and richly personal, filling a gap in the historical record that had gone largely undocumented at this scale before its publication.

This first edition is inscribed by the author on the half-title page and presents in Fine condition with a Fine dust jacket — a crisp, desirable copy of a book whose importance to LGBTQ+ history has only grown in the decades since its original release, and whose author's own signed copies remain modestly scarce on the market.

Fine in Fine dust jacket.