John Donald Gustav-Wrathall

One could be forgiven for surmising from the reviews, blurbs, and (oddly unidentified) cover painting that this book concerns itself with how the YMCA, an evangelical organization, evolved into a noted site for same-sex carnal liaisons. In point of fact, that subject is dealt with only in the book's two final chapters, which, though competently written and researched, are unsatisfying and raise more questions than they answer. The main body of the book concerns itself with such mind-numbers as the proportion of nineteenth-century YMCA administrators who were married and whether women should be admitted to the group. Although the book is obviously well-researched (the bibliography is magnificent), the author ventures into larger themes of American history at his peril; groaners are frequent, most notably his assertion that Grover Cleveland was the only bachelor ever elected to the presidency. To call this a schoolboy error would probably be a trifle harsh on schoolboys. Errors such as this may seem trivial in a book about something else, but to this reader they call into question the entirety of the book's integrity. The last two chapters of this should have been a journal article or submitted to a volume of contributed papers, not an adjunct to a soporific book. For that matter, since the author is continually carping about the lack of a complete history of cruising at the Y, one wonders why he didn't just write it himself; he's more than capable.… (meer)