James Kearney. The Incarnate Text: Imagining the Book in Reformation England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. 328p. alk. paper, $65 (ISBN 9780812241587). LC 2008-050863.

homosexuality across time and place. The bulk of the book consists of 200 pages of alphabetical entries that range from key figures (Radclyffe Hall, Michel Foucault), organizations (Mattachine Society, Log Cabin Republicans), and moments (Stone-wall, the passage of Don't Ask, Don't Tell) in LGBT history, as well as more general references tied by Pickett to the subject. For example, Pickett includes entries for individual countries, including China and Great Britain, and briefly sketches the historical trajectory of LGBT lives, laws, and rights in each. Entries are brief but substantial enough to provide useful framing for students seeking brief introductions to topics in this field. Pickett's supplementary materials are perhaps as valuable as the entries themselves. The front of the book features a list of relevant acronyms and a useful chronology that indicates the author's emphasis on legal milestones and progressive history in six brief pages. A bibliography follows the entries. Pickett helpfully organizes his list of references by subject, and while his selection of key texts would certainly spark debate among scholars (Pickett's references are overwhelmingly drawn from U.S. theorists and historians, for example), they will provide beginners with a solid orientation to many of the touchstone publications in this rapidly expanding field. Print bibliographies quickly become obsolete, of course, but Pickett's culling of texts to 2008 will itself constitute a useful historical document. In an era when print reference texts are a hard sell in any context, the real value of a subject dictionary like this one is the access it gives researchers to authoritative, objective snapshots of a field of study. And perhaps this is why many reference texts are produced not by single authors but by editors who seek contributions from a cross-section of scholars and researchers. The need for multiple perspectives is particularly acute for a field as interdisciplinary and evolving as lesbian and gay history. Written by a political scientist writing in a U.S. context, this dictionary unavoidably bears the marks of its author's position: International histories are told in comparison to a progressive political narrative particular to U.S. gay history, and coverage of literary, cultural, and theoretical issues suffers from what some might see as an overemphasis on key people and organizations involved in political struggles for equal rights. The Historical Dictionary of Homosexuality presents a fairly narrow perspective that is best supplemented by a broader work like Marc Stein's three-volume After finishing James …