Justin Spring in Conversation with Honor Moore from BOMB Magazine on Vimeo.

“This sophisticated biography will appeal to both general and academic readers with an interest in LGBT issues.” —David S. Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Libs., Philadelphia, Library Journal

"This is a rich and exuberant biography of a man who deserves to be better known, as well as a rare window on gay life in an era known mostly for its furtiveness and repression." —The Economist

“Can a secret sex diary furnish an artistic legacy as meaningful as Emily Dickinson’s sewn-up bundles of poems, or the piles of paintings Theo van Gogh inherited after his brother’s premature demise? Samuel Steward may never have imagined it, but his erotic history raises the question . . . Steward was an obsessive record keeper, and his journals and his ‘Stud File’ of thousands of encounters allow [Justin Spring] to create a remarkably full portrait . . . [This] extensive documentation—and the miraculous rescue of that documentation, recounted in the book’s preface—left his biographer material to reconstruct an emblematic homosexual life.” —Benjamin Moser, Harper’s Magazine

“Life in the closet proves boisterous indeed in this biography of an iconic figure of the pre-Stonewall gay demimonde . . . Spring’s sympathetic and entertaining story of a life registers the limitations imposed on homosexuals by a repressive society, but also celebrates the creativity and daring with which Steward tested them.” —Publishers Weekly

“[A] provocative biography . . . Generous excerpts from Steward’s journals and unpublished memoirs fortify an already comprehensive examination of a life lived with unabashed independence and homoerotic expression during the sexual rebellion of the pre-Stonewall era.” —Kirkus Reviews

12/17/10 - "Military Blindness: Don’t Look, Don’t Think, Don’t Tell the Truth" - Off-Center Views
12/13/10 - "Book Marks - Best of 2010" - SouthFloridaGayNews.com
12/5/10 - "Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward Book Review" - FrozenYogurt.com
12/3/10 - "Review: 'Secret Historian,' Justin Spring's biography of the sexual outlaw Samuel Steward" - The Washington Post
12/3/10 - "Best Books of 2010" - Amazon.com
12/2/10 - "Q & A with 'Secret Historian' author" - WBEZ91.5
12/1/10 - "Shedding light on 'founding father of gay Chicago'" - Chicago Tribune
12/1/10 - "Book Review" - Baxter's Blog
12/1/10 - "Book explores life and times of gay pioneer Samuel Steward" - WBEZ91.5
11/29/10 - "Secret Historian: The life and times of Samuel Steward" - Xtra!
11/17/10 - "C-Span Video of Justin Spring at the National Book Awards" - C-Span
11/17/10 - "Historic Visibility: Justin Spring, 'Secret Historian,' at Politics & Prose" - ExpressNightOut.com
11/16/10 - "The Many Lives of The Secret Historian" - Work in Progress Blog by FSG
11/16/10 - "Samuel Steward & His Secret Life" - GalleyGat by MediaBistro.com
11/15/10 - "A Conversation with Justin Spring about Samuel M. Steward" - queersage Blog
11/12/10 - "Professor, Tattoo Artist & Sexual Renegade" - WUWM Milwaukee Public Radio
11/11/10 - "’Live Big and Tell All’ :: Biographer Justin Spring on ’Secret Historian’ Sam Steward" - EDGE Magazine
11/1/10 - "Life of Gay Sexual Renegade & Ohioan" - Oh Boy Magazine
10/26/10 - "Justin Spring at the NYPL" - BOMB Magazine
10/23/10 - "Secret Historian – Samuel Steward" - MOONRANKING Blog
10/17/10 - "Secret Historian" - Lavendar Magazine
10/14/10 - "Nat'l Book Award Nominee Features Professor, Tattoo Artist & Sexual Renegade" - Milwaukee Public Radio
10/13/10 - "Sam's Club" - TimeOUT Chicago
10/13/10 - "National Book Award Finalists" - DailyBeast.com
10/13/10 - "Gay Book Makes Award Finals" - Advocate.com
10/13/10 - "'Secret Historian' by Justin Spring" - Lambda Literary
10/12/10 - "Revealing Sam Steward: An Interview with Justin Spring, author of Secret Historian" - SouthFloridaGayNews.com
10/11/10 - "‘Secret Historian’ Reveals Life of Samuel Steward" - ExpressMilwaukee.com
10/10/10 - "Words of Praise of Secret Historian" - The Pittsburgh Gay Book Club
10/9/10 - "An Excerpt from 'Secret Historian'" - The Nervous Breakdown
10/3/10 - "Book Buzz October 2010" - Lambda Literary
10/3/10 - "Samuel Steward: Studs in the Library" - Try Harder Blog
10/2/10 - "Justin Spring: The TNB Self-Interview" - The Nervous Breakdown
10/1/10 - "'Secret Historian' author to discuss bio challenges at Beinecke" by Joe Meyers - CTPost.com
October 2010 - OUT Magazine reviews "Secret Historian"
9/29/10 - Windy City Times reviews "Secret Historian"
9/25/10 - "Revealing Sam Steward" - Bilerico.com
9/18/10 - "‘Secret Historian’: the man who let it all hang out" by Joe Meyers - CT News Blog
9/16/10 - "Secret Historian: A Remarkable Book Details the Life of a Remarkable Gay Man" by Gary Barlow - Gay Chicago
9/16/10 - "Book Review: Secret Historian" by Alan Chin - Examiners.com San Francsico
9/16/10 - "The Talented Mr. Steward" by Dr. Jack Fritscher - Bay Area Reporter
9/16/10 - "Secret Historian" by Web Behrens - TimeOUT Chicago
9/14/10 - "Secret Historian" by Jason Baumann - Bombsite Magazine
9/14/10 - Gay USA Podcast Interview
9/12/10 - Secret Historian is named "Recommended Reading" by the American Library Association's "Over the Rainbow" Project
9/11/10 - "Sam Seward, romancista, acadêmico, artista da tatuagem" by Lúcia Guimarães - Estadão.com.br
9/10/10 - Featurette in NEXT Magazine
9/8/10 - The Biographer's Craft notes in its September edition that Secret Historian is among the top 10 best-selling biographies in the US
9/9/10 - "Secret Historian" - New York Journal of Books
9/6/10 - "Samuel Steward, Sexual Historian and Tattoo Artist Fucked 807 Men" by Christopher Trout of BUTT Magazine
9/1/10 - "Paradigm Shift" by Christopher Byrne - GayCityNews.com
8/31/10 - "Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward" - NeuFutur Magazine
8/31/10 - "A life of sex and solitude" by David D'Arcy - HeraldTribune.com
8/31/10 - "Talent, ambition, shadowed by secret sexuality" by Carlo Wolff - Boston Globe
8/26/10 - "I Get Around" by Mark Harris - The New York Times
8/22/10 - "Secret Historian" by David D'Arcy- San Francisco Chronicle
8/19/10 - "Lover Man: The Samuel Steward Story" by Brooks Peters - The Huffington Post
8/19/10 - "Secret Historian Samuel Steward was a sexual renegade" by Melissa Anderson - Newsday.com
8/18/10 - "One Night with Valentino" book excerpt - The Advocate
8/17/10 - "New Titles for Fall" - DETAILS Magazine
7/25/10 - "Sexual Outlaw on the Gay Frontier" by Patricia Cohen - The New York Times

“This is a rare and important book. Secret Historian is a genuinely captivating combination of clear writing, a clean conscience, and more dirty stories than I ever imagined one life could hold.”
—Debby Applegate, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher

“A startlingly, unforgettably vivid glimpse into a life—and a world—that few of us can imagine.”
—Terry Teachout, author of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong

"I just read Justin Spring’s Secret Historian about Samuel Steward and let me say that that’s my new favorite book...This guy really knew how to top from the bottom...It’s really good! " -- Film Director John Waters, Baltimore OUTloud

“Justin Spring has painstakingly and compassionately unearthed the labyrinthine world of a brilliant, multifaceted, and troubled creator. A classically educated and highly talented renegade intellectual, Steward’s trajectory was impacted at every turn by his sexual compulsions. This bittersweet story, with its hair-raising and obsessively recorded details, is astonishing. Steward’s humor, empathy, and refusal to bow to the repressive status quo are a moving testimonial to honesty, courage, and integrity. His story should resonate with anyone engaged in the ongoing struggle for personal freedom of identity.”
—Ed Hardy, artist and writer

“A true page-turner—and a memorable act of historical reclamation. Sammy Steward is all but unknown except by a handful of historians, but Justin Spring’s lively biography—which is full of important new information about pre-Stonewall gay life—should put Sammy on the map, which is where he decidedly belongs.”
—Martin Duberman, author of Cures: A Gay Man’s Odyssey

“Justin Spring documents the extraordinary life of one of Kinsey’s crucial gay witnesses, and reading Secret Historian is like reading Kinsey dramatized. A cultivated, rather shy professor of English literature, Sam Steward dropped out in midlife to become an eminent tattooist and writer of S&M porn. As the story of a sex-obsessed recovering alcoholic later addicted to barbiturates and to masochistic thrills, this could easily have become a portrait of a failure. Instead, through Steward’s copious records, we have a brave, fly-on-the-wall account of American homosexual subculture and persecution.”
—Martin Stannard, author of Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark: The Biography

“Samuel Steward, secret sexual historian, is a secret no longer. From an evangelical Ohio boardinghouse to the gardens of the Villa Borghese, from the lobby of the City Opera to the South Side YMCA, Steward led—and recorded—an improbably revealing, representative life. Bedding Oscar Wilde’s Bosie, taking tea with Stein and Toklas, and confessing to (and performing for!) Dr. Kinsey, he seemed determined to leave no corner of twentieth-century American queer culture unexplored and undocumented. Justin Spring has rescued his story from a San Francisco attic and set it before twenty-first-century readers with unflagging patience, authority, and humanity—Secret Historian is a major achievement.”
—Langdon Hammer, author of Hart Crane and Allen Tate