This ground-breaking work is the primary sourcebook for an accurate, fascinating, historical account of American lesbians and gay men. Now with a new preface and an updated bibliography, the collection remains the most complete and authoritative reference work of the homosexual experience in the United States. Here are reprints of rare and hard-to-find documents that represent over four hundred years of oppression, conflict, and struggle in the New World. Among its wealth of provocative material are an 1891 photograph of male-male dancing in the Old West; a 1974 interview with a male homosexual victim of shock treatment; a 1629 journal account of 'sodomitical activity' among the first American colonists; and an account of lesbianism in the life of blues singer Bessie Smith. Impeccably researched and covering American history from the earliest European settlers and Native Americans to contemporary times, this volume is both a superb history and a deeply moving work.