This was a fun book to read after the main charaters where introduced and plot started. The charaters are rich and I hope the author writes a sequal as I want to see what new adventures awate them. This book also is a good resource for those who wonder how the Catholic church picks a new Pope. As this is likley to happen in the next few years this is a good refresher.

This book really blew me away. It was recommended to me by a friend as a great summer beach book and she was right (altho' she did have to explain the title to me), I couldn't put it down! I especially enjoyed the hot romance between the guardsman and the activist (altho' some of it might make your mother blush). Totally interesting characters, fast-moving plot, and the ending left me with tears in my eyes. Book me on the next flight to Rome!

Infallible had all the elements; stimulating story, entertaining characters with a story line that takes you around the world. I literally could not put this book down. Infallible had humor, mystery, and intrige- reminds me of "Tales of the City" by Armistead Maupin.

While long familiar with the civic works of his lover, Kevin McKowen, I hadn't known about Rev. Robert Williams' book until a Christian friend recommended it to me. Inspiring to all, of any faith. Certainly a must-read. Indeed.

Well writeen, personable story....answered a lot of my questions that I was feeling. Easy to read and understand. A must for christians were are striggling with their own homosexuality.

as a former minister & now queer & proud, this book answered many questions, a must read for anyone who is queer & Christian.

The Beggar's Opera by John Gay is an artful yet honest representation of London in the early 1700s. As the Editor's introduction notes, it is a political satire that brings to life the actions of such notorious figures as Jonathan Wild and Robert Walpole. In the Beggar's introduction the reader is made aware of the author's intent to mock the recent craze of the Italian Opera, which is considered by Gay to be thouroughly "unnatural." Immediately after that we are exposed to the corruption of a city offical, Peachum (whose name means "to inform against a fellow criminal"), as he is choosing which criminals should live, as they are still profitable, and who should not, as they have turned honest. Peachum's character of both an arch-criminal and law man is interesting enough in his daily dealings; add to that his daughter's recent marriage to a highwayman (who the father then plots to send to the gallows). Not to mention what happens when the highwayman runs into an old aquaintance of his, who visibly shows his earlier affection, and you have what makes to be a highly entertaining, emotional, and educational story of 18th century London. The dialogue is well written, and the only problem a modern reader might have is the operatic aspect. I suspect that the mockery of the opera is not felt as much when read but rather when performed. Note to reader: it makes it much easier to understand if you read the introduction. There you will find instances of "real" London that the playwrite is satirizing. For all lovers of period English pieces who enjoy a cynical wit.

Life is a jest; and all things show it, I thought so once; but now I know it. - John Gay's epitaph As we sit here, nearly 300 years removed from the debut of The Beggar's Opera, it's hard to recapture the effect that it had on the England of 1728. So look at it this way, John Gay was the Sex Pistols of his day and The Beggar's Opera hit London like Never Mind the Bollocks....

Since Italian opera had first come to London in 1705, it had dominated the British stage. Replete with ornate sets, elaborate costumes, unintelligible plots and imported sopranos and castrati, it was less art than event. Audiences attended to share in the spectacle, as chariots swooped through the air & romantic tales unfolded on stage. Into this artificial world, Gay unleashed an opera about the scum of London society, set in taverns and thieves' dens. He tells the story of Peachum, a fence with a lucrative sideline in informing on fellow criminals. His daughter Polly has secretly married MacHeath, a highwayman. Now Peachum and his "wife" fear that MacHeath will inform on them & inherit their loot when they are hanged. After berating Polly for marrying, & not having sense enough to live out of wedlock, they decide to turn MacHeath in, before he can turn them in. As Peachum prepares his daughter for this turn of events he tells her: "The comfortable estate of widowhood, is the only hope that keeps up a wife's spirits. Where is the woman who would scruple to be a wife, if she had it in her power to be a widow whenever she pleased?" However, to the Peachum's disgust, Polly is actually in love with MacHeath and so, to her great surprise, are several other women, including Lucy Lockit who helps him to escape from prison. So, the stage is set for a madcap farce. Mix in a satiric look at the corrupt administration of justice, some political jabs at the political master of the day, Sir Robert Walpole and songs like the following:

A fox may steal your hens, sir A whore your health and pence, sir, Your daughter rob your chest, sir Your wife may steal your rest, sir, A thief your goods and plate. But this is all but picking, With rest, pence, chest and chicken; It ever was decreed, sir, If lawyer's hand is fee'd, sir, He steals your whole estate.

and you've got Gay's recipe for what quickly became the most popular play of the 18th Century, fathering myriad imitations including Brecht's Threepenny Opera. A delicious romp. GRADE: A

good collection of stories written in a manor to keep your interest. Once you start reading the book it keeps your interest and you wish to see what is next. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to enjoy a variety of fiction.

Youthful, horny guys feature in this wild collection of seriously filthy sexual adventures. Truly shocking! Includes: What If..?; Scruffy Cowboy Boots; Pumping Gas and Food Chain. - from Prowler Press

John Giorno is one of the finest spoken word poets in New York City. He is also quite adept at getting the word down on paper, too. You Got to Burn to Shine is a great collection of poems. It even includes an introduction by William S Burroughs. Giorno writes poetry from the gut. It is free verse that swings with intensity. if you like a snifter of realism in your poetry then this book is for you. Giorno writes with a hard nosed frankness that is both poignant and refreshing without being overbearing. Poems like Stretching it Wider and (Last Night) I Gambled With My Anger and Lost are classic free verse. I read this collection with great delight.

I found this book to be powerful and truthful. The context and the langauge were delicate machines portaying the life of the author. It should not be read by anyone with a closed mind.

After reading (mostly) glowing reviews, I decided to give this book a try, despite the tired subject matter cited in the cover blurb. The fluid writing kept me expecting more than the book actually delivered. Gay ghettos, open relationships, youth-obsessed culture... Anyone who's ever picked up a single issue of Genre or Out knows enough about these subjects to have written this novel. The language and the structure are stong, but not strong enough to carry the thin plot, wherein the protagonist mostly laments the fact that he can't have a deeply satisfying relationship with every beautiful man he meets. Supporting characters, most of whom spend time finding and discussing what "paths" they should follow, don't do any more growing than the main character.

This lack of character growth was my main problem with the novel. The characters rehash every conversation that has been part of the urban gay forum for the last ten years, but only from the perspective of people who are in the urban gay life. That the (exclusively sex-driven) culture of the novel is the only possible culture is taken for granted by all characters, thereby removing any real tension between opposing viewpoints. When an open relationship between the protagonist and his primary partner begins to lack "passion" for the partner, the question of whether opening the relationship is part of its downfall is never seriously considered. Similary, the problem of youth-obsession is solved through anonymous sexual encounters at roadside rest stops, where the protagonist is still made to feel young. Less "sophisticated" - but equally valid - views such as monogamy never provide a contrast for the characters to make compelling arguments for their current, unfulfilling lifestyles.

One minor character, introduced near the end as a sort of "voce ex machina," has had what he feels is a full life and beautiful relationship, but is introduced so artificially, and briefly, that it doesn't have much impact beyond distraction. And in the end, distraction - from one man to the next, from one self-imposed dramatic episode to the next, is all these characters seem to desire or achieve. They don't need to find all the answers, but the story itself should ask more questions.

The writing is promising enough that I wouldn't hesitate to pick up another book by Mann, if the novel had more perspective than the characters.

This was one of the first books I read when I was searching for gay literature. What surprised me was how much I could identify with Jeff & Lloyd's relationship. Yes, ther are many cliches here, and at once it is easy to cast off this book as a nother example of gay stereotyping.

What I loved was that you get to hear the questions in Jeff's head about how he is living his life. What truly makes him happy, how he feels, and how he truly wants to be.

The story is moving, and for those gay men living in Boston or have lived there, the setting is going to seem aty once familiar and pleasant.

I applaud Mann for his book. I hope more people give it a chance and do not dismiss it is another stereotypical gay story when it is much more than that. It rings true!

I read this book after recently ending a 10-year relationship, and I thought it was absolutely true to reality and my feelings. It's the story of a gay couple's 7-year itch, the meaning of passion when sexual desire cools, life and love in the era of AIDS, and the effects of change on your life. I heartily recommend this book and am waiting anxiously for Mann's next.

After Nirvana is Lee Williams' odyssey of five runaway teens living off the hard streets of Portland and Seattle. With a forcefully graphic style, Williams effectively and minutely details Portland's city streets, the hustling, the drugs, and the faceless sex. It is a staid, emotionless novel fully consistent with the emotional insulation of the teens. However, it also is a story where suppressed emotions occasionally break out showing the teens to be nothing more than cold, frightened, lonely kids. It is an interesting read, even though the ending is somewhat predictable. Overall, After Nirvana is an exceptional depiction modern hustlers and an excellent portrayal of street kids in the nineties.

A bit vapid, a bit glamorized...Williams' view of street life is one that seems right on if you are a gay prettyboy and your tastes in drugs run more to ecstasy and the psychadelics. As someone with two strikes against me (being that I adore opiates and that I do not possess a penis), I found this book somewhat lightweight. Perhaps because Williams either is or is fascinated by gay males himself, the female characters in this book seemed one dimensional and peripheral. They exist only to prop up the males' existence and do not have the same pathos, torment, and beauty as the male characters. Now, 99% of all films/books have this problem so I should really blame society for this flaw, not Williams...but if you are at all irked at this tendency, particularly in portraits of countercultures, do not buy this book. If however you are lucky enough to be an attractive young hipster boy you will probably adore this book and its depictions of sex, drugs, sleazy johns, parties, and Portland street life.

This is not the kind of book I would normally read, and thus I enjyoyed it all the more for bringing me into a world I would not have otherwise known. This account of young people in what is apparently recorded as a "post-grunge period" reveals to us the chaotic life of four youngsters who find themselves misplaced and out of touch. (I don't say out of touch with "reality" because they have their own reality with which they are very much in touch.) We're basically in the mind of the narrator, but at the same time we're not because he's actually addressing us, almost as if he's telling us his story. What startled or rather impacted me most is that these youngsters have no plan, few rules, and much life. They live the moment, worrying little about tomorrow although in their own way they're always thinking about their next step and concerned about the future. Williams seems to have captured well the existentialist nature of these post-grungists, if that term may be used. In the end, the characters may be trapped in a world that has forgotten them, but they are freer than the others who surround them.

I believe that I have read all of William J. Mann's published works and really enjoyed them. So it was with great expectation that I approached his new work "Behind the Screen". Sadly, I left the book disappointed and somewhat confused.

Mann's attempt to write a comprehensive history of gay Hollywood was admirable, but somehow, he's gotten in the way of his own work. One of my problems with the book is the way in which it was written. As you read any biography, there is a risk of proposing too many names for the reader to handle. Right in the first chapter, as he explains early gay stars, we are innundated with so many names that it is virtually impossible to keep track of anyone after awhile. Talking about people is very important to a biography, but when the reader has little to no knowledge or connection with the names, they merely blend together in a confusing mass of lexiographic confusion. I'd hope it would improve, but sadly, found each successive page more frustating than the last, and I failed to get through chapter three.

However, I found a somewhat easier way to read the book. I began looking up celebrities I wanted info on, and just reading those sections. He still manages to litter each page with an abundance of names, but because you may know the celebrity, there is something more to hook into.

Mann has an ability to write books that are amazing. Just read "Wisecracker" and "The Biograph Girl", both which celebrate early morning lore. Maybe he should try to concentrate on writing more about individual celebrities than a sweeping work that leaves us confused and frustrated.

If Neal Gabler's "An Empire of Their Own" dealt with "How the Jews Invented Hollywood," then William Mann's "Behind the Screen" could be also be called "How Gays and Lesbians made Hollywood!" Mann's book is a serious chronological of the golden age and the people who created it; they just happened to be gay. A very informative book, research extensive, it covers new territory with wit and style dealing with something new in Hollywood history; it is an excellent read. Mann's interviews are astute with survivors of this golden age, a history of a Hollywood movie gay life, that was both creative and glamorous, never to be seen again. It covers the totality of a gay experience in studio era Hollywood and Mann has captured the influence of these men and women behind the screen. Not just movie stars, the book deals with gay directors, that reads like a who's who of Hollywood's creative best, along with the gay set and costume designers who gave Hollywood a look and influenced the taste of the entire world. The material is rich and covers gay producers, character actors, writers, cameramen, agents, executives, etc. It is all enthralling and provides a long needed important volume in Hollywood history. It also chronicles gays who played a part in union organizations, at a time when the studio bosses only concern was profit and greed, along with mentioning their meritorious service during World War II. It makes such contemporary military follies as "don't ask, don't tell," an insult to the memory of these valliant Americans. It is greatly recommended to anyone interested in the movies and how people with great taste and style, something so lacking today, influenced an entire period of our culture.

With a very educated writing style based on much research, Mann has presented a profoundly interesting history of gays in Hollywood. I couldn't put this book down. The details are vastly interesting. E.g., I didn't know that gays were accepted in movies and expected to appear in them from the beginning of theie appearance in movie theaters until the depression hit and the immoral right (the Catholoic church and the federal censors) pounced on Hollywood in the early 30s and used gays as a scapegoat, as did Hitler the Jews later in WWII. There are innumerable cultural, societal, and political details herein, making this a great read. An additionally wonderful read is his previous book on gay actor William Haines, also an outstanding tome.

I bought this book with high hopes, and as much as I hate to say it, I'm disappointed. There is quite a bit of info on William Haines' movie career here, and that is the best part of the book. Sadly, though, I feel the author runs into trouble in three places. First, he tries to give us a lot of context about the Hollywood of the time, but much of what he presents is quoted from other books, nearly all of which I've read and few of which I feel were adequately researched themselves. There is already too much classic-movie "scholarship" based on old press handouts and issues of "Photoplay"; I wish Mann had either dug harder for primary sources or left out material that could not be backed up by more substantive research.
My second quibble is that Mann devotes most of the book to Haines' acting career- which occupied only twelve years of his subject's life- and only a small portion to the decorating career Haines enjoyed for decades after he left the movie business. The info Mann gives on this period is well-researched, but there is not anything like enough of it.
My third reservation is my largest. In 1936, Haines and his lover Jimmie Shields were accused of molesting a young boy in Manhattan Beach, CA. They were run out of town; there was a hearing that ended in a dismissal. Up to a point, Mann seems to have made an admirable effort to get at the facts. Unfortunately, in his zeal to uncover the whole story, Mann found and interviewed the boy, now a retired mayor of Manhattan Beach. The ex-mayor says the molestation DID take place, and that the perpetrator was Jimmie Shields. Mann then does both his readers and his interviewee a grave disservice. Mann asserts that this may be a "false memory" implanted in the boy's mind by the adults involved in the case, saying this is a common phenomenon. Well, yes, it IS- but I think whether that is true in this instance is a determination that should be made by a doctor, not a biographer.
Don't get me wrong- this isn't a terrible book. It's just not the book I hoped it would be, and the section about the Manhattan Beach incident left me cold. Contradicting an interviewee is something a biographer should do only with provable facts in hand.

After hearing William Mann describing his book on NPR, I was surprisingly disappointed by Wisecracker. Mann is to be lauded for his thorough research and conscientiousness in presenting all plausibilities and possibilities in documenting the life of gay movie star turned interior designer Billy Haines. In the end, however, I was left feeling rather unsatisfied and regretting my investment of time in reading 464 pages. For me, the factual meat of the story could have been condensed into a two-part Vanity Fair article that would also have allowed for a splashier and more illustrative use of photographs. For instance, if the Jack Warner estate was arguably Haines' greatest work why not show interior photographs? Documented evidence of Haines' efforts would have allowed the reader to make up his own mind rather than being left with the implied and ironic assessment that openly gay movie mogul David Geffen engaged in a form of desecration through the total renovation of the estate that now belongs to him.

Billy Haines was a real-life antithesis to Norma Desmond. His career and life were much more successful and fulfilling after he left pictures. He was admirable for living an openly gay life at a time when such a lifestyle was rare and took courage. His story is worth telling and knowing, but to fill almost 500 pages, a fictionalized biographical approach, in the manner of Dominick Dunne or Gore Vidal, would have allowed Mann to be less scholarly and more evocative. Mann is a respected author of fiction. The story could have been a far juicier and enjoyable read but Mann would have had to have loosened his tether to documented fact. The book Mann wrote is commendable, but I believe there is a better book that could have been written.

Williams Haines is perfectly suited as a lens through which to examine life, gay life in particular, in old Hollywood when the silents were king and when they first fell. William J. Mann in Wisecracker (The Life and Times of William Haines, Hollywood's First Openly Gay Star) captures this time with exuberance. The author shows the social scene and fills it out with many, many captivating stars and scandals, gossip and gay parties. Williams Haines was young with the movies and it shows. The added bonus of the book is the long portion of William Haines life during which he was not a movie star. There is an emotional resonance to the last third of the book the deepens the fun of the first two-thirds. A wonderful look at a life lived honestly for its time and the story of a love that survived for decades under all of that honesty.

I hate to say this is like most contemporary gay fiction being written today, but it is. This isn’t a bad thing, in fact, it’s great that fiction can center more on our own families, as well as our nuclear families, and just talk about everyday life, its problems, and events common to most of us, whether we are gay or straight. This is an interesting read, a very quick read, and a pleasant way to spend a few hours. The story centers around Clu, a man who’s in his 30’s, and his return home to a small town in Texas, called Grit. He returns home with his psychic lover of eight years to help his mother, who’s sick with cancer, thru the last days of her life. The story goes off in many directions,but the theme is whether a man from the big city, of course, Manhattan, can really go home and find peace & happiness in his old home town. Will he & his partner, Chris, be accepted back home by friends and relatives now that he is openly gay? Clu relationship with his partner also gets tested when a blond, muscle hunk named Preston enters the picture. Anyway, you get the picture here. A light, easy read, but a book that has some muscle to it, and one that proved to be interesting enough for me to really enjoy it. I especially related to his loving and very caring feelings toward his mother, and how much they bonded near the end. I was touched by Jack Sibley’s sensitive writing of this very special time that Clu spent with his mother. I experienced the same feelings when my own mother had cancer. A touching story, and one I definitely recommend!!

I have to say that based on previous experience with Kensington, the publisher of this book, I didn't expect something engaging and well-written, but I enjoyed Any Kind of Luck thoroughly. I agree with other reviewers that the story is full of eccentric, generally likable characters. Clu, the main character, frequently gets self-righteously angry at the sometimes less than enlightened locals, and at one point I have to say I thought that Clu went a little far. His problems with his temper seem a little out of place considering his generally congenial and considerate personality. Also, his partner Chris starts to drift from Clu as the book progresses, and unless it's Clu's irritability that bothers Chris, Sibley doesn't make it clear (to me anyway) why Chris might be falling out of love. There are some fantastic turns of phrase, and I envy Sibley's ability to weave so many plot lines into a cohesive and very satisfying novel. Sibley also details the contradictions of contemporary rural Texas in fascinating and humorous ways.

Having never heard of this author but having read the reviews of the book, I figured I'd squeeze in one more fluff summer read before the weather turns cold and my reading more introspective.

I was not disappointed. For anyone who has enjoyed books by Robert Rodi, Doug Guinan, or the other "Gay Light" authors, this book is a must-have. Anyone can imagine the humor of two gay men who move from the ultimate chic locale (NYC) to hick Texas - it's a given.

There's plenty of camp, plenty of humor, a bit of preaching thrown in (how could a queen from NYC move to the sticks in TX and NOT preach?) and a colorful cast of characters.. all in all a very enjoyable book. Look forward to next summer - hopefully Mr. Sibley will have another one out in time!