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About
The bestselling author of the definitive history of the AIDS epidemic, And the Band Played On, provides the most thorough analysis yet of the place of gay men and women in the US military Published during the same year the American military instituted Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and eighteen years before President Barack Obama repealed it, Conduct Unbecoming is a landmark work of social justice and a searing indictment of the military establishment's historic bigotry toward its gay servicemen and women. Randy Shilts's eye-opening book describes the bravery, both exceptional and everyday, not only of gay soldiers throughout history, but also of gay men and women serving in our modern military. With each anecdote and investigation, Shilts systematically dismantles the arguments against allowing gays to serve in the military. At once a history of the American military and an account of the gay rights movement, Conduct Unbecoming is a remarkable testament to the progress achieved for gays in the military-and a revealing look at how far we have yet to go.
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Reviews
"[This] exhaustively researched book is packed with information dating back to the founding of the country but focuses mostly on the purges of gay and lesbian military of the past hundred years. . . . This important book is a rich narrative history and also a memorial to those whose names should have been etched in stone."
San Francisco Chronicle
"A sober, thoroughly researched and engrossingly readable history on the subject. [Shilts's] chronicle is excellent military history, closely woven with an enthralling analysis of the changing definitions of sexuality and personal relationships in American society. . . . [A] landmark book . . . Remarkable."
The New York Times Book Review
"Gripping reading . . . The history of homosexual people and the movement for gay and lesbian equality in the United States can nowhere be more clearly told."
The New York Times Book Review