Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade

My overall impression of Sam Steward's life was one of empathy & identification. Although he possessed much more education & opportunity than I, much of his own accord; his basic feelings toward life & his sexual orientation/activity is what I could most closely associate with. I really came to care very much for Sam Steward; someone I had never known of even heard of until I read this book's review in The New York Times. THANK YOU Justin Spring for pursuing this work into publication; I am most heartily grateful to you.

Fascinating biography of a gay man who kept track of all of his sexual partners throughout his life - including some notorious ones (Rock Hudson, Rudolph Valentino to name a couple). As a professor and then a tatoo artist and sex researcher, Steward had to choose between career and love - something that resonates with me since I was faced with a similar choice in my day. And since I grew up in a relatively conservative household [like Steward], my background did not provide any strategies for dealing with my homosexuality other than to live an [at least partially] closeted existence - something I have [since] rejected. Warning: this book is definitely *not* for the uninitiated (!).