GAY WARRIORS, NEW BOOK FROM NYU PRESS, FOREVER CHANGES THE WAY WE LOOK AT "GAYS IN THE MILITARY"

(To request a review copy of Gay Warriors: A Documentary History from the Ancient World to the Present, contact Barbara Jester at (212) 998-6844, or by fax at (212) 995-4021, or e-mail: baj1@nyu.edu).

In ancient Greece and Rome, in Crusader campaigns and pirate adventures, same-sex romances were a common and condoned part of military culture. Gay Warriors: A Documentary History from the Ancient World to the Present (432 pages/$65, cloth; $19.95, paper), written by B.R. Burg, professor of history at Arizona State University and the author of Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition (NYU Press), has recently been published by the New York University Press.

Gay Warriors traces how gays and lesbians have played a crucial but often hidden role in military campaigns – from the Peloponnesian War to the Gulf War, from the campaigns of Achilles to Lawrence of Arabia.

Recent debates over the legality of gay service in the military and the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy have obscured this rich aspect of military history, and Burg has recovered important documents and assembled an anthology on these often invisible gay and lesbian warriors from antiquity to the present.

Burg shows us that the Amazons of legend weren’t just fictional. Readers learn about the richness and variety of the Amazons’ culture in documents from Plato, Seneca, and Suetonius. The sexual culture of the samurai is explored along with its relationship to warmaking. From courts-martial proceedings readers discover women warriors in 17th century England who passed as men in order to serve, and army officers whose underground culture fostered long-term romantic friendships.

Also included are sections on the American Civil War, World Wars I and II, the contemporary U.S. military and discussions of sailors and pirates.

01/24/02