The best books about the hidden histories of American subcultures

Book cover of Just Kids Book cover of Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul Book cover of Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin Book cover of Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 Book cover of All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

The best books about 20th-century US History that make you rethink something you thought you already knew

Book cover of Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 Book cover of War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War Book cover of War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences Book cover of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Book cover of At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power

The best books to blow your mind about sex in the past

Book cover of Sex in the Heartland Book cover of The Abortionist: A Woman Against the Law Book cover of Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 Book cover of Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America Book cover of Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud

The best books on gay history before Stonewall

Book cover of Indecent Advances: A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall Book cover of Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement Book cover of The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government Book cover of Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 Book cover of Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.

The best books on the modern history of cities

Book cover of High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing Book cover of Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 Book cover of Reading Berlin 1900 Book cover of City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London Book cover of Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-De-Siècle Paris

The best books on how New York became New York (that aren’t Robert Caro’s The Power Broker)

Book cover of The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces Book cover of Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 Book cover of Affordable Housing in New York: The People, Places, and Policies That Transformed a City Book cover of All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity Book cover of The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984

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Book cover of The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government Book cover of Indecent Advances: A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall Book cover of War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War Book cover of Just Kids Book cover of At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power Book cover of The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984

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