‘Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity’ by Robert Beachy
This is an important book, and an impressive feat of scholarship drawing on nearly five hundred sources, with twenty-two pages of notes and sixteen pages of photographs.
‘Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity’ by David M. Friedman
“The book’s central thesis is that our modern-day cult of celebrity, in the Kardashian sense of unaccomplished people famous for being famous, had its beginnings in Wilde’s American tour.”
‘The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America’ by Edward White
“The Tastemaker is essential reading for anyone interested in how America emerged from the cultural shadow of Europe in the last century.”
