The Deviant's War cover art

The Deviant's War

The Homosexual vs. the United States of America

Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

The Deviant's War

By: Eric Cervini
Narrated by: Vikas Adam
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

2021 Triangle Awards - Nominee
2021 Pulitzer Prize - Finalist
2020 Triangle Awards - Winner

"Vikas Adam draws the listener in, expertly narrating Cervini's work, which charts the beginning of the gay rights movement in the United States...Vikas Adam does an excellent job lending unique voices to real historical figures." (AudioFile Magazine)

A Publishers Weekly most anticipated spring book

From a young Harvard and Cambridge-trained historian, the secret history of the fight for gay rights that began a generation before Stonewall

In 1957, Frank Kameny, a rising astronomer working for the US Defense Department in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny, like countless gay men and women before him, was promptly dismissed from his government job. Unlike many others, though, Kameny fought back.

Based on firsthand accounts, recently declassified FBI records, and 40,000 personal documents, Eric Cervini's The Deviant's War unfolds over the course of the 1960s, as the Mattachine Society of Washington, the group Kameny founded, became the first organization to protest the systematic persecution of gay federal employees. It traces the forgotten ties that bound gay rights to the Black Freedom Movement, the New Left, lesbian activism, and trans resistance. Above all, it is a story of America (and Washington) at a cultural and sexual crossroads; of shocking, byzantine public battles with Congress; of FBI informants; murder; betrayal; sex; love; and ultimately victory.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

©2020 Eric Cervini (P)2020 Macmillan Audio
Americas Biographies & Memoirs Freedom & Security LGBTQ+ Studies Politics & Government United States Social justice

Listeners also enjoyed...

Justice Corrupted cover art
Miss Memory Lane cover art
Dissent cover art
Shocking the Conscience cover art
Secret City cover art
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World cover art
Mayday 1971 cover art
Democracy in America cover art
An Ordinary Man cover art
Lady Justice cover art
Demagogue cover art
One Mighty and Irresistible Tide cover art
Set the Night on Fire cover art
Resistance Women cover art
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You cover art
Frederick Douglass cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
Essential, gripping and entertaining in equal measure - this is the deeply fascinating history of the US gay rights movement in the 1960s. It explodes the myth that gay life began with the Stonewall riot, and relates the (sometimes comical) pitched battles between J Edgar Hoover and early activists which played into and set the scene for the broader movement building of the 1970s. Well read and highly recommended!

Gripping - Le Carré meets LGBT+ history

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.