Books : The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (Stonewall Inn Editions)
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 979.4610530924
EAN: 9780312019006
Format: Illustrated
ISBN: 0312019009
Label: St. Martin's Griffin
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 388
Publication Date: March 15, 1988
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Sales Rank: 233534
Studio: St. Martin's Griffin
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Product Description:
The Mayor of Castro Street is Shilts's acclaimed story of Harvey Milk, the man whose personal life, public career, and tragic assassination mirrored the dramatic and unprecedented emergence of the gay community in America during the 1970s. His is a story of personal tragedies and political intrigues, assassination in City Hall and massive riots in the streets, the miscarriage of justice and the consolidation of gay power and gay hope.
Amazon.com Review:
When Randy Shilts's The Mayor of Castro Street appeared in 1982, the very idea of a gay political biography was brand-new. While biographies of literary and artistic figures (both living and dead) were a popular genre, there had been no openly gay political figure who merited a full-length book. Harvey Milk--a gay political organizer who became the first openly gay city supervisor in San Francisco and was then assassinated (along with liberal mayor George Moscone)--was the obvious choice for such a book. And Randy Shilts--a young reporter who had risen up through the gay press to become the first openly gay reporter with a gay "beat" in the American mainstream press--was the perfect person to write it. While his later works such as And the Band Played On and Conduct Unbecoming were based on hard-hitting, fact-driven reportage, Shilts's tone in The Mayor of Castro Street is softer, more focused on the narrative of Harvey Milk's political rise from running a small business on Castro Street, to organizing local gay men and lesbians around grass-roots issues, to winning an elected office. But in many ways this is also a forceful and engaging story of the gay rights movement in the second half of the 20th century. Thus, Shilts follows the growth of the Castro as a gay neighborhood and the growth of San Francisco's gay community from a ragtag collection of people who socialized and sexualized together into a vibrant and political force. --Michael Bronski
Average Rating: 
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Randy Shilts's intricately researched biography of one of the greatest gay activists of all time, Harvey Milk, is not only a political biography, but a chronology of an entire political movement.
This is the second book I've read by Randy Shilts, the first being And the Band Played On. While there are certainly some differences between the two, Shilts's imaginative narrative writing is the same. The Mayor of Castro Street is proof positive that he [the author] can turn even the most mundane of political machinations into high drama.
Starting out when Harvey Milk was growing up in Woodmere, New York, the book traces his life from there. From his high school athletic career, to his college years, his time with the Navy, and his Manhattan years. When Harvey makes the move from New York to San Francisco, the book changes pace, and a gay political hero is born. The book is filled with snippets of his speeches, and in the back appendices, the eloquent words of Harvey Milk come alive, as some of his more famous speeches are reprinted there.
At a solid 380 pages (including appendices and sources) the book never drags. Everything appears to be cause and effect, which makes for some white-knuckle reading even if the reader is already familiar with the budding gay movement, Harvey Milk's participation in it, and the untimely tragic assassination of he and Mayor George Moscone by a homophobic zealot.
I must admit, there were certain parts of this book that gave me ... Read More
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I read a lot of biographies and, while I love the genre, I'm often disappointed with the writing. This book, by the late Randy Shilts, is an exception. Shilts was a great writer, able to take a variety of facts and put them into readable passages (his "And the Band Played On" is another good example of this). Harvey Milk and the San Francisco of the 1970s come to life in this book. The tragedy of Milk's assassination and its aftermath are rendered in gripping detail.
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Randy Shilts has taken great pains to present the man honestly, exploring his political and personal lives. The result is an illimunitating portrait of the Gay Rights champion, documenting his triumphs and ideals alongside his personal ambiguities and foibles. Milk's rise to power, as well as the city's rich gay history, are depicted with candor and clarity.
The assassinations are reported in graphic detail, as is the reaction of the people. Intial shock and grief turn to righteous indignation when, on May 21, 1979 White is convicted on two counts of "valuntary manslaughter" with a maximum sentence of seven years, eight months. The city explodes. Justice is thwarted. A martyr is born. Milk's murder galvanizes the Gay Community to stand up and take their rightful place in society. A great book.
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In The Mayor of Castro Street, the late Randy Shilts paints a vivid picture, not only of the life of gay politician Harvey Milk, but of the fight for gay rights in 1970's San Francisco and the nation as a whole. After a description of the events immediately following Milk's death, Shilts begins the book with Milk's youth in New York City. He briefly describes Milk's years in New York, and spends the vast majority of the book on Milk's last five years in San Francisco. It was during his San Francisco years that Milk made his critical contributions to gay history, including encouraging the development of the Castro into a gay Mecca, and running for, and finally winning, elected office as an openly gay man in a time when most thought such things simply couldn't happen.
Shilts is a meticulous reporter. In his section on source material he details how he extensively interviewed Milk's former lovers, including Scott Smith and Joe Campbell. Many of the dialogues for the biography come directly from the personal diary of Michael Wong, a longtime Milk supporter. According to Shilts, dialogues with others who knew Milk virtually always corroborated those in Wong's diary. Shilts's history of the Castro area came from over one hundred interviews he conducted with area residents.
One of the best qualities of the biography is its astonishingly objective posture. Achieving something like objectivity is a tremendous challenge for the author of any modern-day history, ... Read More
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Beyond the frank and up front story of the life of Harvey Milk, this book is an incredible source of information and understanding of the gay rights movement from before its beginning to after the death of Supervisor Milk. Easy to read, albeit long, it's definitely worth the effort. No matter your sexual orientation, this brings new light to an often misunderstood movement.
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