The content is necessary reading for understanding an important part of civil rights and modern history that is seldom taught. The writing, however, for me held it back. Not that it’s poorly written, there are just too many tangents down unnecessary roads, so that the story has to double back again and again. Like, going out of its way to describe an early relationship one of the book’s central characters had. A relationship that didn’t factor into this person’s developing beliefs or get him involved in a movement. The tangent only existed to reveal that the man had briefly dated Harvey Milk. The book spends much time on this kind of historical footnoting and name-dropping. To the extent that the Stonewall raid and subsequent riots doesn’t appear until 3/4 of the way through. Not to discount the importance of all this history, but I picked up this book thinking it would be a gripping read I would tear through on a topic I’m very interested in, and instead found myself struggling with the material for far too long. I’ll chalk it up to reading preferences, but can’t help feeling this could have been told in a way that engaged, at least this reader, so much more.