{"title":"James Polchin","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into James Polchin's compelling explorations of queer history and culture. His insightful works offer fresh perspectives on identity, society, and the untold stories that shape our world. Start browsing now.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"indecent-advances-book-james-polchin-9781785786297","title":"Indecent Advances","description":"'A grisly, sobering, comprehensively researched new history.' - The New Yorker  Indecent Advances is a skilful hybrid of true crime and social history that examines the often-coded portrayal of crimes against gay men in the decades before Stonewall.   New York University professor and critic James Polchin illustrates how homosexuals were criminalized, and their murders justified, in the popular imagination from 1930s 'sex panics' to Cold War fear of Communists and homosexuals in government. He shows the vital that role crime stories played in ideas of normalcy and deviancy, and how those stories became tools to discriminate against and harm gay men.   J. Edgar Hoover, Kerouac, Burroughs, Patricia Highsmith, James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg and Gore Vidal all feature.  Published around the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in 1969, Indecent Advances investigates how queer men navigated a society that criminalized them. Polchin shows how this discrimination was ultimately transformed by gay rights activists before Stonewall, and explores its resonances up to and including the policing of Gianni Versace's death in 1997.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49571833774353,"sku":"GOR012125194","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49736741847313,"sku":"NGR9781785786297","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1785786296.jpg?v=1772272817"},{"product_id":"indecent-advances-book-james-polchin-9781785785658","title":"Indecent Advances","description":"'A grisly, sobering, comprehensively researched new history.' - The New Yorker  Indecent Advances is a skilful hybrid of true crime and social history that examines the often-coded portrayal of crimes against gay men in the decades before Stonewall.   New York University professor and critic James Polchin illustrates how homosexuals were criminalized, and their murders justified, in the popular imagination from 1930s 'sex panics' to Cold War fear of Communists and homosexuals in government. He shows the vital that role crime stories played in ideas of normalcy and deviancy, and how those stories became tools to discriminate against and harm gay men.   J. Edgar Hoover, Kerouac, Burroughs, Patricia Highsmith, James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg and Gore Vidal all feature.  Published around the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in 1969, Indecent Advances investigates how queer men navigated a society that criminalized them. Polchin shows how this discrimination was ultimately transformed by gay rights activists before Stonewall, and explores its resonances up to and including the policing of Gianni Versace's death in 1997.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49643430740241,"sku":"GOR009882264","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49734730481937,"sku":"NGR9781785785658","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50272899793169,"sku":"GOR012931007","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1785785656.jpg?v=1772273479"},{"product_id":"shadow-men-book-james-polchin-9781640096004","title":"Shadow Men","description":"On the morning of May 16, 1922, a young man's body was found on a desolate road in Westchester County. The victim was penniless ex-sailor Clarence Peters. Walter Ward, the handsome scion of the family that owned the largest chain of bread factories in the country, confessed to the crime as an act of self-defense against a violent gang of 'shadow men,' blackmailers who extorted their victims' moral weaknesses. From the start, one question defined the investigation: What scandalous secret could lead Ward to murder? For sixteen months, the media fueled a firestorm of speculation. Unscrupulous criminal attorneys, fame-seeking chorus girls, con artists, and misogynistic millionaires harnessed the power of the press to shape public perception. New York governor and future presidential candidate Al Smith and editor of the Daily News Joseph Medill Patterson leveraged the investigation to further professional ambitions. Famous figures like Harry Houdini, Arthur Conan Doyle, and F. Scott Fitzgerald weighed in. As the bereaved working-class Peters family sought to bring the callous Ward to justice, America watched enraptured. Capturing the extraordinary twists and turns of the case, Shadow Men conjures the excess and contradictions of the Jazz Age and reveals the true-crime origins of the media-led voyeurism that reverberates through contemporary life. It's a story of privilege and power that lays bare the social inequity that continues to influence our system of justice.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49753973063953,"sku":"NGR9781640096004","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49881851527441,"sku":"CIN1640096000G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50129467572497,"sku":"CIN1640096000VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51042929803537,"sku":"NIN9781640096004","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51092371702033,"sku":"GOR014174353","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1640096000.jpg?v=1751443232"},{"product_id":"indecent-advances-book-james-polchin-9781640091894","title":"Indecent Advances","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA fast-paced, meticulously researched, thoroughly engaging (and often infuriating) look-see into the systematic criminalization of gay men and widespread condemnation of homosexuality post-World War I. ―Alexis Burling, \u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eStories of murder have never been just about killers and victims. Instead, crime stories take the shape of their times and reflect cultural notions and prejudices. In this Edgar Award-finalist for Best Fact Crime, James Polchin recovers and recounts queer stories from the crime pages―often lurid and euphemistic―that reveal the hidden history of violence against gay men. But what was left unsaid in these crime pages provides insight into the figure of the queer man as both criminal and victim, offering readers tales of vice and violence that aligned gender and sexual deviance with tragic, gruesome endings. Victims were often reported as having made indecent advances, forcing the accused's hands in self-defense and reducing murder charges to manslaughter.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs noted by Caleb Cain in \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e review of \u003ci\u003eIndecent Advances\u003c\/i\u003e, it's impossible to understand gay life in twentieth-century America without reckoning with the dark stories. Gay men were unable to shake free of them until they figured out how to tell the stories themselves, in a new way. \u003ci\u003eIndecent Advances\u003c\/i\u003e is the first book to fully investigate these stories of how queer men navigated a society that criminalized them and displayed little compassion for the violence they endured. Polchin shows, with masterful insight, how this discrimination was ultimately transformed by activists to help shape the burgeoning gay rights movement in the years leading up to Stonewall.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50278947815697,"sku":"CIN1640091890G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50691940712721,"sku":"CIN1640091890VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":51453019357457,"sku":"CIN1640091890A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1640091890.jpg?v=1751278288"},{"product_id":"indecent-advances-book-james-polchin-9781640093874","title":"Indecent Advances","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51043491610897,"sku":"NIN9781640093874","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51134394892561,"sku":"CIN1640093877G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1640093877.jpg?v=1751183028"},{"product_id":"shadow-men-book-james-polchin-9781640097902","title":"Shadow Men","description":"On the morning of May 16, 1922, a young man's body was found on a desolate road in Westchester County. 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As the bereaved working-class Peters family sought to bring the callous Ward to justice, America watched enraptured. Capturing the extraordinary twists and turns of the case, Shadow Men conjures the excess and contradictions of the Jazz Age and reveals the true-crime origins of the media-led voyeurism that reverberates through contemporary life. It's a story of privilege and power that lays bare the social inequity that continues to influence our system of justice.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53218247278865,"sku":"NGR9781640097902","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781640097902.jpg?v=1773136542"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-au\/collections\/author-books-by-james-polchin.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}