About the authors: Laura Erickson-Schroth, M. D. is a psychiatrist working with LGBTQ+ people in New York City. She is the editor of "Trans Bodies: a resource guide written by and for transgender people. Laura A. Jacobs, LCSW-R (New York, NY) is a trans and genderqueer-identified psycho-therapist, writer, activist, and public speaker working on transgender and gender-nonconforming LGBtQ+, and sexual/gender diversity issues. Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of "She's Not There" and "Long Black Veil," said of this work. ". . .This book provides, with equal measures of scholarship and humanity, thoughtful pushback against the most common misconceptions, misunderstandings, and just plain lies about trans people and the people who love them. This work contains twenty pages of resources and has extensive chapter notes.

Included in a blog post and resource list at https://booksbeyondbinaries.blog/2019/06/10/non-fiction-about-gender-and-trans-e...

This book clearly lays out and demolishes the myths about trasgender people. It is on a high school or later middle school writing level so it's easy to read. It's calm and clear in a world of wild rumors. There are plenty of resources and help for people who need it. It's low on rhetoric and high on logic and calm.

First off, I have to say that I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, and I am grateful to the publisher for the copy of this book.

I will say that I did not have super high hopes for this, mostly because I haven't seen a kind of 'introduction to transgender' done well before, but this surprised me with its nuance! The authors do a pretty decent job of painting trans people as more than a monolith, and always leave room for a lot of difference within the community, which I really enjoyed and found interesting. My one major complaint is that although there are "notes" in the back, these notes are not connected to specific claims in the book, so when I come across something that makes me go "oh???" I can't find the exact place the authors got that information. I understand why they might not use foot or endnotes (some readers might find them intimidating) but it was something I missed.

I will also say this isn't really a 101-level book, either; more like 102, maybe. It felt accessible but like maybe there was a little bit of previous knowledge needed. I could be wrong though, as I have a hard time gauging these things.

Overall, I was pretty pleasantly surprised to see how nuanced this book was, and encourage folks who might have questions to seek it out! ( )