Charles Kaiser is an American author and journalist best known for his nonfiction books 1968 in America (1988), The Gay Metropolis (1997), and The Cost of Courage (2015). A former reporter for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek, he is currently a nonfiction book critic for The Guardian.

Biography

Kaiser was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Philip Mayer Kaiser, a United States diplomat, and Hannah Greeley Kaiser; he has two brothers, one of them the journalist Robert Kaiser.[1] He grew up in Washington, Albany, New York, Dakar, Senegal, London, England, Windsor, Connecticut, and New York City.[2] Kaiser graduated from Columbia University in 1972,[3] and subsequently worked as a reporter for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek. As a freelance journalist, he has contributed to The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Observer, New York magazine, and Vanity Fair. His first book, 1968 in America, was published in 1988.

Kaiser's second book, The Gay Metropolis (1997), is a social history that traces the cultural accomplishments and increased social acceptance of gay people in America between the years 1940 and 1996.[4] Kaiser later said that he wrote the book out of "an obligation to bear witness to what we had all lived through [during the AIDS epidemic]," explaining, "I wanted to write a book that would include AIDS, but not be overwhelmed by it".[5] In 2007, an updated edition of The Gay Metropolis was published, and Kaiser appeared on The Colbert Report to promote the book.[6] In 2019, The Guardian described the third updated edition of The Gay Metropolis as "one of the key popular studies of American social history [and] among the first accounts that sought to provide an extended history of gay life (admittedly mostly male) before and after Stonewall."[7] Kaiser's book has also been cited for popularizing the theory that Judy Garland's funeral was one of the motivating factors behind the Stonewall riots.[8]

From 2007 to 2011, Kaiser wrote Full Court Press, a blog about the media that appeared on Radar Online, the Columbia Journalism Review, and the Sidney Hillman Foundation website.[9][10][11]

In 2012, Kaiser wrote the afterword for a new edition of Merle Miller's landmark 1971 work On Being Different: What it Means to Be a Homosexual.[12]

Kaiser's third book, The Cost of Courage, follows the story of the Boulloches, a family who participated in the French Resistance. To research the book, Kaiser lived in France for two and a half years, interviewing surviving members of the Boulloche family and studying newly declassified documents from British intelligence agencies.[13] The Cost of Courage was published in 2015 to enthusiastic reviews from The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Christian Science Monitor.[14][15][16] In 2015, Kaiser said that his next project would be "a big book about New York since 1970."[13]

Kaiser has taught journalism at Columbia University and Princeton University; in 2018, he was named Acting Director of the LGBTQ Public Policy Center at Hunter College. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with his husband, the artist Joe Stouter.[13]

Bibliography

Honors

  • 1997 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Studies (for The Gay Metropolis)[17]
  • 2015 Paris Book Festival Award for General Non-Fiction (for The Cost of Courage)[18]
  • 2015 Inducted into the LGBTQ Journalists Hall of Fame[19]

References

  1. ↑ "Philip M. Kaiser, 93; longtime U.S. diplomat," Los Angeles Times 26 May 2007.
  2. ↑ "Charles Kaiser: Author of The Gay Metropolis," Gay Today 3 Nov. 1997.
  3. ↑ http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_events/symposia/history_vid_archive/mccaughey.pdf
  4. ↑ Lopate, Phillip. "Rapid Transit: How 'America's most despised minority' gained acceptance in record time," The New York Times 9 Nov. 1997.
  5. ↑ Kranzky, Kyle. "A Landmark Book on Gay History Has Been Updated and Re-Released for a New Generation," Los Angeles Magazine 23 Jul. 2019
  6. ↑ "The Colbert Report - Series | Comedy Central Official Site | CC.com". Colbertnation.com. 2016-09-30. Retrieved 2021-02-07.
  7. ↑ Turner, Mark. "The Gay Metropolis review: if we can survive Aids, we can survive Trump," The Guardian 18 Aug. 2019.
  8. ↑ Waxman, Olivia B. "Some People Think Stonewall Was Triggered by Judy Garland’s Funeral. Here’s Why Many Experts Disagree," Time 23 Jun. 2019.
  9. ↑ "Search Results". Archived from the original on 2008-10-11. Retrieved 2016-11-23.
  10. ↑ "Charles Kaiser Archive - Columbia Journalism Review". Cjr.org. Retrieved 2016-11-23.
  11. ↑ "Full Court Press | the Hillman Foundation". Archived from the original on 2010-07-17. Retrieved 2010-07-26.
  12. ↑ Kaiser, Charles. "When The New York Times Came Out of the Closet," The New York Review of Books 25 Sept. 2012.
  13. 1 2 3 Kalb, Deborah. "Q&A with Charles Kaiser," Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb 16 Jun. 2015.
  14. ↑ Kirsch, Jonathan (2015-06-19). "Unraveling a long-suppressed mystery of French Nazi resistance". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2016-11-23.
  15. ↑ Rosbottom, Ronald C. (2015-06-16). "Paris's Secret Garden". Wsj.com. Retrieved 2016-11-23.
  16. ↑ "'The Cost of Courage' profiles a heroic family of French Resistance fighters". CSMonitor.com. 2015-06-17. Retrieved 2016-11-23.
  17. ↑ "Lambda Literary". Lambda Literary. 1998-07-14. Retrieved 2016-11-23.
  18. ↑ "Paris Book Festival".
  19. ↑ "NLGJA Hall of Fame - NLGJA".
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