WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 67Review_NONFICTION
The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual
vs. the United States of America
Eric Cervini. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $35
(512p) ISBN 978-0-374-13979-7
Historian Cervini’s ambitious and
exhaustive debut recounts the life of
astronomer and gay rights activist Frank
Kameny (1925–2011) and the campaign
to end federal discrimination against
homosexuals. Dismissed from the U.S.
Army Map Service in 1957 for allegedly
lying about his 1956 arrest for “lewd
conduct” in a San Francisco restroom,
Kameny was living on 20¢ per day
(“enough for two or three frankfurters
and a half a pot of mashed potatoes,” he
claimed) when an ACLU-affiliated lawyer
agreed to represent him pro bono. Cervini
tracks Kameny’s case against the U.S.
government through the court system
(the Supreme Court denied his appeal in
1961), as he
became more
and more
involved in
gay rights
activism—
cofounding the
Washington,
D.C., branch of
the Mattachine
Society, making
TV appearances
to combat negative stereotypes against
homosexuality, and advising other
government employees in their own dis-
crimination cases. Weaving the Kinsey
report, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s “Sex
Deviates” program tracking homosexual
arrests and allegations, and the 1969
Stonewall riots into his portrait, Cervini
provides essential context, but occasionally
overstuffs the narrative with undigested
material, including trial transcripts and
interviews. Readers interested in the ori-
gins of the LGBTQ rights movement will
be deeply informed by this meticulous
account. (June)
Humankind: A Hopeful History
Rutger Bregman, trans. from the Dutch by
Elizabeth Manton and Erica Moore. Little,
Brown, $28 (480p) ISBN 978-0-316-41853-9
Dutch historian Bregman (Utopia for
Realists) puts a positive spin on human
behavior in this intriguing survey of
politics, literature, psychology, sociology,
and philosophy. To prove his hypothesis
that humankind is basically good, Bregman
reevaluates some of the most entrenched
cultural narratives suggesting otherwise.
For example, six Tongan boys shipwrecked
on an island in the 1960s didn’t beat each
other senseless—à la William Golding’s
characters in The Lord of the Flies—but
lived harmoniously until their rescue a
year later. Bregman also revisits the
Stanford Prison Experiment (researchers
muddled the study by ensuring that stu-
dents chosen as guards would be cruel to
those posing as prisoners) and the 1964
murder of Kitty Genovese, in which 37
bystanders supposedly heard her cries for
help but failed to intervene (Bregman
offers evidence that several people actually
did call the police, and that one of Kitty’s
neighbors ran directly to her aid). He even
attempts to fold the Holocaust into his
theory, but his explanation that the Nazis
“believed they were on the right side of
history” fails to either hearten or persuade.
Overall, however, this intelligent and
reassuring chronicle disproves much
received wisdom about the dark side of
human nature. Readers looking for solace
in uncertain times will find it here. (June)The Impostors:
How Republicans Quit Governing
and Seized American Politics
Steve Benen. Morrow, $28.99 (384p)
ISBN 978-0-06-302648-3
Benen, a political commentator and
producer of The Rachel Maddow Show,
debuts with a sober-minded attack on the
modern GOP for being a “post-policy
party” more interested in winning elections
than effective governance. Beginning with
Barack Obama’s 2008 election and running
through Donald Trump’s 2019 impeach-
ment, Benen offers an “issue-by-issue
indictment” of Republican positions on
climate change, economic policy, and
immigration, among other hot-button
topics. He cites a Politico report that
Trump used “retweet tallies” as evidence in
support of withdrawing U.S. troops from
Syria, castigates Republican lawmakers for
proposing a 2009 economic stimulus plan
based on “opening up coastal areas for oil
drilling,” and accuses former House speaker
John Boehner of “waging a deliberate sabo-
tage campaign against American foreign
policy” by partnering with Israel’s primeLooking for
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