There's a lot of history in this book that I had no idea about! I'm happy for all the tidbits of information about different historical events, people, places, and movements. I appreciated that Molesso and Needham highlighted that they couldn't cover everything important in the space they had, and I do hope they will publish another history book highlighting some of those things that got left out. My biggest concern with this book is that the text was tiny and the color choices frequently made it difficult to read. Other than that, I think it's a great Queer History starter book. ( )

This was solidly okay in terms of broad queer history. There are bits and pieces that I think that are good--the AIDS section in particular I think does a very good job actually of showing the scope of the ongoing crisis, and not just putting it into the past. Some of the language feels a little patronizing--the frequent use of "rude" to describe structural homophobia and transphobia eventually made me wish for literally any other word--but that may be a very YMMV thing.

I think the book's greatest weakness ultimately is a weakness that most of these broad queer history books for younger folk have, which is this deep adherence to the US settler state's politics of inclusion. The book literally ranks marriage above domestic partnership and civil unions when there are lots of reasons and choices for folks not to choose marriage, which is a little yikes. I know we don't yet have an Against Equality trilogy for young people (if someone wants to tap me to write that, I'd love to!), and wanting this book to be that isn't it, but it's frustrating to see the limits of queer imagination in these types of books, and also how that colors our visions of the past. (PS, Oscar Wilde was married and loved his wife and I wish we talked about that more, though I don't blame these authors for participating in a very long discourse they stumbled into.) ( )

This is a brief but colorful summary of lgbtq+ history, focusing primarily on people, events and movements in the last 200 years. There was so much new information to me that it seemed every three pages I was distractedly setting the book aside to learn more about a particular topic. Though the additional delving down the rabbit hole was welcome and fascinating, it probably took me twice as long to finish the book than it otherwise might have! Unfortunately, I feel compelled to deduct points for sheer legibility. The book is published in a tiny font that is inherently difficult to read, and then exacerbated by questionable text color and background color combinations. ( )