Secret City The Hidden History of Gay Washington

James Kirchick, Ron Butler

eAudio - 2022

"Not since Robert Caro's Years of Lyndon Johnson have I been so riveted by a work of history. Secret City is not gay history. It is American history."—George StephanopoulosWashington, D.C., has always been a city of secrets. Few have been more dramatic than the ones revealed in James Kirchick's Secret City.For decades, the specter of homosexuality haunted Washington. The mere suggestion that a person might be gay destroyed reputations, ended careers, and ruined lives. At the height of the Cold War, fear of homosexuality became intertwined with the growing threat of international communism, leading to a purge of gay men and lesbians from the federal government. In the fevered atmosphere of political Washington, the secr...et "too loathsome to mention" held enormous, terrifying power.Utilizing thousands of pages of declassified documents, interviews with over one hundred people, and material unearthed from... more