The Crimson Letter can be called a lovingly traced out gay family tree at Harvard. Shand-Tucci '72 first sets up two homosexual archetypes at Harvard in the first chapters: the Walt Whitman warrior/athlete masculine man (think Brokeback Mountain) and the effeminate Oscar Wilde aesthete (approximately the experts on Queer Eye). Subsequent chapters describe how various generations of Harvard men, starting in the mid-nineteenth century, fit into each, as they lived their lives either close to or away from the Yard. Reading it requires work as it is comprised of dense, reference-rich passages.There is a buried running thread about how male homosexuality has changed over the last century or so. There is not much about lesbians, as women are a recent addition to Harvard. However, although the people mentioned are more or less well known, to claim this book discusses the shaping of American culture is to have a narrow, somewhat elitist view of what constitutes American culture. On many levels this book seems like a historical equivalent of a gossip column with much name dropping; not sure if anyone without ties to Harvard would find it of significant interest.

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