3635. Sex-Crime Panic: A Journey to the Paranoid Heart of the 1950s, by Neil Miller (read 7 Oct 2002) This is a book by a homophilic lecturer in English at Tufts U., published by a press which labels itself as "the nation's premier publisher of books for the gay, lesbian, and bisexual community." It tells of events in Sioux City, Iowa, in the 1950s and was read by me because I knew much of those events. The book is very judgmental and tends to ignore the fact that in the 1950s sodomy was a felony whereas now sodomites seem to feel it is a sacred constitutional right. There are numerous errors in the book and it is biased, footnoteless, and relies much on anonymous sources, rumor, and speculation. ( )

Accessible, detailed and frightening. Miller shows how, in the late 1950s, northwest Iowa reacted to a child murder by rounding up "the usual suspects": local gay men, often entrapped by police. These men were slandered, libeled and locked up in the state mental hospitals--though none were ever convicted of involvement in the murder. ( )