This review will be short. The original reviewer ran up against life and was needed elsewhere.

Normal we'd just leave it be and have it sat there until they had time, however, when I post this in the morning, Be Gay Do Crime, will have around 48 left of it's Kickstarter and for that reason I think there is a bit of need to get it out there.

I'm not telling you this in some vague solidarity trying to fill out the target mind, they've tripled their goal. I'm telling you this so you can be one of the hundreds of people backing the project and being lucky enough to get a first edition of this absolutely fantastic book.

Whether you are queer or stray, whatever type of crime you do, whatever school of socialism you lean towards or if you are apolitical and love history, this is categorically a work you're going to need in your life. Be Gay, Do Crime continues on the fantastic Working Class History, a book so packed with fascinating artifacts from our shared history of resistance I'll even overlook the Noam Chomsky foreword.

The book opens with three beats,

The first, a short introduction to the book, it's format, and the nature of it's contents. Particular care is paid to the nature of violence and the choice of title. It is clear from these opening phrases that this book has been crafted with purposeful and meaningful care, not just for the milieu of antagonistic queer anarcho-rebels but to be accessible to all, connecting as broad a number as possible with the radical past and the ongoing story of our existence as queer individuals and communities.

The second, a foreword by Cindy Barukh Milstein, called “An Amulet, A Rose, and a Dagger”. Cindy is a NewYork based anarchist who organises with the Institute for Anarchist Studies, they also edited “Constellations of Care” (another absolutely beautiful book this time by Pluto Press) and author of Anarchism and it's aspirations. To be quite short. They know their shit. Across three short pages they not only give a deep purpose behind the upcoming fragments but light a fire in the reader that will set them scrawling the following 221 pages of revolution and rebellion, powerful successes in the struggle and even more powerful failures until the small hours....

The third and final beat before the main event is an Introduction by Working Class History. This intro gives framing for the book itself and the context of it's existence and the social context behind it, particularly that of the rising tide of fascism and with it queer erasure in the United States and the horrific turn we are in the midst of herein the UK whilst making a keen point to the international realities rising bigotry.

Then it's bang, January 1, three entries each one of which sent me to the internet to learn more. Each concise summation of some moment and memory is a seed. That is the beautiful craftwork of the editors at hand. This isn't just some list of events like some shelf piece your gran has of “This Day In History”, this is a barrage of the most wonderful, vile, fantastic, tragic and inspiring moments, written with a concise but easy to read manner, each and every one a sluice gate holding back the reservoir of queer history. It's an invite they are keen for you to take up with some 38 pages of small printed notes, citations and source.

I've not read through the entire thing but it looks like pretty much every calendar day has two or three selected entries, each providing a short description of events, the Who, What, Where and Why of it and having put it alongside the “On This Day” section from the Working Class History website it looks to contain a whole bunch of new and original material, which no doubt will subsequently be added and they ever expand this wonderful resource.

The the editors Zane McNeill, Blu Buchanan, and Riley Clare Valentine, have collectively done a fantastic job of parsing though the history books and thousands of sources to curate and narrate this beautiful collection. Together they have made a cornerstone of any social history collection. It's a book will work whether it's a pick up/drop down book for your bus ride to work, whether you read it corresponding to the day, or as a reference for queer history (It's furnished with a 14 page index for the purpose), what you have here is a weapon of mass liberation. One I cannot recommend enough. Whether you end up buying a copy, stealing one, borrowing one, finding a .pdf or reading on some online archive, make a point of it and you'll be so much richer for it.

Should you wish to pick up a copy, the Kickstarter campaign can be found here and you can buy it direct from PM Press here for $24.95 paperback, $8.95 ebook, or hardback for $49.95.

Finally, just a shout out to Working Class History, like The Anarchist Library, Lib-Com, Mayday Rooms and other such spaces. They hold up the sky and are keeping the memory of the working class alive. These space might just seem like websites, but they are projects which are a massive workload and emotional burden. The folk behind them going mostly unsung as they spend countless hours keeping the backend working and developing new and interesting projects to help more and more of our fellow workers engage with their history and present.You absolutely should add their Podcast, map project and On This Day into your regime and support them in any way you can.