SECRET CITY

The New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 Named one of Vanity Fair's ''Best Books of 2022'' ''Not since Robert Caro's Years of Lyndon Johnson have I been so riveted by a work of history. Secret City is not gay history. It is American history.'' -George Stephanopoulos Washington, D.C., has always been a city of secrets. Few have been more dramatic than the ones revealed in James Kirchick's Secret City. ''the greatest national scandal since the existence of the United States,'' James Kirchick illuminates how homosexuality shaped each successive presidential administration through the end of the twentieth century.Cultural and political anxiety over gay people sparked a decades-long witch hunt, impacting everything from the rivalry between the CIA and the FBI to the ascent of Joseph McCarthy, the struggle for Black civil rights, and the rise of the conservative movement. Among other revelations, Kirchick tells of the World War II-era gay spymaster who pioneered seduction as a tool of American espionage, the devoted aide whom Lyndon Johnson treated as a son yet abandoned once his homosexuality was discovered, and how allegations of a homosexual ring controlling Ronald Reagan nearly derailed his 1980 election victory.Magisterial in scope and intimate in detail, Secret City will forever transform our understanding of American history.