Unlike many social movements, the gay and lesbian struggle for visibility and rights has succeeded in combining a unified group identity with the celebration of individual differences. In "Forging Gay Identities", Elizabeth Armstrong explores how this happened, developing a new approach that draws on both social movement and organizational theory. She traces the evolution of gay life, gay organizations and gay identity in San Francisco from the 1950s to the mid-1990s, identifying two events as pivotal in their evolution. First, in 1969 the encounter between early homophile organizing and the New Left produced gay liberation and its signature contribution - coming out. Second, the sudden decline of the New Left in the early 1970s reduced the viability of the radical gay-liberation goal of societal transformation and prompted gay activists to redirect their movement to the affirmation of gay identity and the pursuit of gay rights. "Forging Gay Identities" should be valuable for anyone studying social movements, culture, identity politics or ogranizational theory.

Two young women, dormitory mates, embark on their education at a big state university. Five years later, one is earning a good salary at a prestigious accounting firm. With no loans to repay, she lives in a fashionable apartment with her fiance. The other woman, saddled with burdensome debt and a low GPA, is still struggling to finish her degree in tourism. In an era of skyrocketing tuition and mounting concern over whether college is "worth it," Paying for the Party is an indispensable contribution to the dialogue assessing the state of American higher education. A powerful expose of unmet obligations and misplaced priorities, it explains in vivid detail why so many leave college with so little to show for it. Drawing on findings from a five-year interview study, Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton bring us to the campus of "MU," a flagship Midwestern public university, where we follow a group of women drawn into a culture of status seeking and sororities. Mapping different pathways available to MU students, the authors demonstrate that the most well-resourced and seductive route is a "party pathway" anchored in the Greek system and facilitated by the administration. This pathway exerts influence over the academic and social experiences of all students, and while it benefits the affluent and well-connected, Armstrong and Hamilton make clear how it seriously disadvantages the majority. Eye-opening and provocative, Paying for the Party reveals how outcomes can differ so dramatically for those whom universities enroll.