The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (Stonewall Inn Editions)
by Randy Shilts
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Book Summary Information
Author: Randy ShiltsEdition: Paperback
Format: Illustrated
Published: 1988-03-15
ISBN: 0312019009
Number of pages: 388
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Book Reviews of The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (Stonewall Inn Editions)
Book Review: "If a bullet should enter my brain..."
Summary: 5 Stars
Randy Shilts's intricately researched biography of one of the greatest gay activists of all time, Harvey Milk, is not only a political biography, but a chronology of an entire political movement. This is the second book I've read by Randy Shilts, the first being And the Band Played On. While there are certainly some differences between the two, Shilts's imaginative narrative writing is the same. The Mayor of Castro Street is proof positive that he [the author] can turn even the most mundane of political machinations into high drama.
Starting out when Harvey Milk was growing up in Woodmere, New York, the book traces his life from there. From his high school athletic career, to his college years, his time with the Navy, and his Manhattan years. When Harvey makes the move from New York to San Francisco, the book changes pace, and a gay political hero is born. The book is filled with snippets of his speeches, and in the back appendices, the eloquent words of Harvey Milk come alive, as some of his more famous speeches are reprinted there.
At a solid 380 pages (including appendices and sources) the book never drags. Everything appears to be cause and effect, which makes for some white-knuckle reading even if the reader is already familiar with the budding gay movement, Harvey Milk's participation in it, and the untimely tragic assassination of he and Mayor George Moscone by a homophobic zealot.
I must admit, there were certain parts of this book that gave me chills: Harvey Milk's beautiful speeches, the candlelight vigils, the many marches, and the White Night Riots. The sheer epic proportions of it all can overwhelming.
However, epic or not, this remains the simple story of a man and his dream, vision, and hope for his gay brothers and sisters, and all of humanity.
Summary of The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (Stonewall Inn Editions)
When Randy Shilts's The Mayor of Castro Street appeared in 1982, the very idea of a gay political biography was brand-new. While biographies of literary and artistic figures (both living and dead) were a popular genre, there had been no openly gay political figure who merited a full-length book. Harvey Milk--a gay political organizer who became the first openly gay city supervisor in San Francisco and was then assassinated (along with liberal mayor George Moscone)--was the obvious choice for such a book. And Randy Shilts--a young reporter who had risen up through the gay press to become the first openly gay reporter with a gay "beat" in the American mainstream press--was the perfect person to write it. While his later works such as And the Band Played On and Conduct Unbecoming were based on hard-hitting, fact-driven reportage, Shilts's tone in The Mayor of Castro Street is softer, more focused on the narrative of Harvey Milk's political rise from running a small business on Castro Street, to organizing local gay men and lesbians around grass-roots issues, to winning an elected office. But in many ways this is also a forceful and engaging story of the gay rights movement in the second half of the 20th century. Thus, Shilts follows the growth of the Castro as a gay neighborhood and the growth of San Francisco's gay community from a ragtag collection of people who socialized and sexualized together into a vibrant and political force. --Michael BronskiThe Mayor of Castro Street is Shilts's acclaimed story of Harvey Milk, the man whose personal life, public career, and tragic assassination mirrored the dramatic and unprecedented emergence of the gay community in America during the 1970s. His is a story of personal tragedies and political intrigues, assassination in City Hall and massive riots in the streets, the miscarriage of justice and the consolidation of gay power and gay hope.
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