James Kirchick has written about human rights, politics, and culture from around the world. A columnist for Tablet magazine, a writer at large for Air Mail, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, he is the author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and other publications. For decades, the specter of homosexuality haunted Washington. The mere suggestion that someone might be gay destroyed reputations, ended careers, and ruined lives. At the height of the Cold War, fear of homosexuality became intertwined with the threat of communism, leading to a purge of gay men and lesbians from the federal government. Utilizing declassified documents, interviews with more than 100 people, and material unearthed from presidential libraries and archives around the country, Kirchick’s Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington (Henry Holt & Co.) is a chronicle of American politics like no other. Cultural and political anxiety over gay people impacted everything from the rivalry between the CIA and the FBI to the ascent of Joseph McCarthy, the struggle for civil rights, and the rise of the conservative movement.
