BOOKS

Notices and reviews of books, articles, plays and poetry dealing with homosexuality and the sex variant. Readers are invited to send in reviews or printed matter for review.

THE HORN BOOK by G. Legman, University Books, Inc., New Hyde Park, New York, 1964 565 Pages, $12.50.

pointed

This reviewer has already pointed out that the twofold theme of the history of Western Europe since the Renaissance has been the development of democracy and the application of rationality successively to the various concerns of mankind. Democracy means that the goods of life should be distributed among all men as over against their monopoly by a small group of a favored and privileged minority. It is here that the great work of ONE is done in teaching that homosexuals as a discriminated-against minority are entitled to the same consideration as any other member of society, neither more nor less. The application of rationality, so well illustrated in the field of the natural world by the astounding modern development of science, to the field of sex is still in its earlier stages. Every type of prejudice, bigotry, and irrationality seems arrayed against its sane and rational consideration. But progress is being made. The present encyclopedia volume marks an important and hopefully influential step in the right direction. The author, who was official bibliographer for the Kinsey Institute for a time, has broad experience and with incredible industry has amassed a body of material without equal in the field.

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The Horn Book, which also calls itself Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography, is a listing of materials gathered from innumerable sources with chapters of comment and interpretation which add much to counteract the tendency to tedium in reading the almost interminable listings. It is a marvel how the author has managed to collect so much material especially in view of the universal tendency to destroy, mutilate, conceal, and misrepresent sex materials. It is perhaps an unsolved mystery why sexual manifestations and expression have aroused such opposition and hostility in view of their profoundly natural character. The author has done a wonderful piece of work in wading through this morass and coming out with rational and plausible conclusions. He found

much better source materials in the other major languages than in English.

The name of the present volume, The Horn Book, is derived from that of a small volume published in 1899 with the additional title of A Girl's Guide to the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The author states:

"The words Horn Book" originally referred to a sort of kindergarten battledore on which was tacked a slip of paper with the alphabet and the Lord's Prayer printed on it, and covered with a strip of transparent horn to protect the print from the children's grimy hands. By extension the term has come to mean any primer. In this