Bodies politic and visual are at the heart of David K. Johnson's well-written and extensively researched book. It seeks to fill a serious gap in the academic literature regarding the role played by physique industries in the evolution of a self-conscious gay movement in the United States. Although nonacademic sources have studied the gay photographers, artists, and writers who created the genre, with its beefcake photos and magazines, academics have largely ignored them to the point of “outright distain,” replicating their dismissal by some homophile activists of the period (p. viii). However, as Johnson demonstrates, these and other products helped bring gay, white males together as consumers and as a virtual community. “Gay commerce,” he observes, “was not a byproduct of the gay movement but a catalyst to it” (p. xiv).

Physique magazines emerged from the weightlifting, physical culture, and bodybuilding movements of the early twentieth century. Gay photographers captured images of the posed and barely covered male body, marketing them along with the weights and supplements sold through the strength magazines. In 1951, hostility from the traditional weightlifting publishers led photographers like Bob Mizer of Los Angeles to start marketing their work on newsstands and by mail via journals such as Mizer's Physique Pictorial. Their photos of “mostly white” bodybuilding models, gay and straight, communicated pleasure and “camaraderie”; these were not the weightlifters of the strength magazines (pp. 15, 41). The publications also featured artwork by artists such as Tom of Finland and George Quintance highlighting the male body and gaze. Photographers published in one another's magazines and even shared mailing lists. Facing harassment and prosecutions, Mizer resisted the repression and wrote numerous editorials against it, framing the battle as one for “human rights” while advocating for “activist opposition” (p. 48).

Another publication, The Grecian Pictorial, created by two white southerners and the whitest of the magazines, harkened back to classical appreciation of male-male comradeship. They sought, through their Grecian Guild, to construct a fraternal society to promote this vision, including a chaplaincy stressing spiritual virtue as a part of community. Readers responded with their own thoughts and photos. Its press run peaked at 55,000 copies, while another of their publications boasted a circulation of 30,000.

Mailing lists and pen-pal clubs resulted from these efforts and fueled sales but left both the publishers and the consumers of physique magazines vulnerable to legal harassment. Eisenhower administration Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield waged war against these journals and clubs and, through them, homosexuality. Infiltrating mailing lists, postal officials harassed and intimidated members, raided photographers’ studios, and indicted ten men, targeting teachers.

Meanwhile, gay-themed books flourished through the New York–based Greenberg Press and the Cory Book Service (CBS). Using mail-order distribution, the service was “an act of political resistance” against governmental repression and censorship (p. 65). A gay bookshop owned by the service opened in Manhattan in 1953. CBS was sold to a Long Island housewife in 1957 and renamed the Winston Book Service, but it remained focused on gay-oriented publications and advocated for gay and lesbian rights. Homophile groups followed by attempting similar services.

Consolidation in the late 1950s and 1960s created larger providers. Former philosophy professor Lynn Womack's Guild Press expanded to include multiple physique journals, including Grecian Pictorial (acquired in 1960), a 40,000-name mailing list, his own publishing house, clothing for the gay male community, a gay-themed book club, informational guides, and a correspondence club that morphed into classified personal ads. It also attracted U.S. Postal Service inspectors and prosecution. While one conviction led to Womack's confinement, a 1962 case before the Supreme Court, Manual v. Day, upheld the right to provide materials such as the physique magazines to the gay community. Editorials in Womack's publications pushed the boundaries by criticizing censorship. Not surprisingly, his success stimulated competitors, including fitness publisher Joe Weider and even some mainstream homophile organizations.

This expansion culminated with Directory Services, Inc. (DSI). Founded in 1963 by two gay “business-school trained entrepreneurs,” the company expanded to market journals—theirs and others, including some featuring full frontal nudity—and related products as well as informational directories through the mails (p. 220). Lucrative operations in Minneapolis enabled DSI to acquire competitors at discount prices, undermining independent producers. They soon incorporated printing into their mix, and national distribution led them to collaboration with Mafia-controlled bookstores. DSI was challenged by postal officials in 1967; the resulting trial sustained its right to publish and distribute, with U.S. District Court judge Earl Larson concluding that the real issue was not obscenity but the rights of homosexual citizens. DSI and the “physique era” itself, however, succumbed to the massive cultural shifts, shady practices on DSI's part, the explosion of sexually explicit materials and vendors, and the rise of the LGBTQ movements that followed.

Johnson documents the birth and decline of the physique industries with a deep dive into original and secondary sources, crafting a creative and challenging rethinking of the prologue to the explosion of the LGBTQ movements. Certain aspects would benefit from greater development; for example, while “age-discordant” implications are touched upon, they warrant further exploration regarding the Grecian Guild (p. 115). Business historians may also desire a richer statistical take on this fraction of the publishing industry and a more formal framing of vertical and horizontal integration. Likewise, describing DSI as a conglomerate seems inappropriate. It was an effectively vertically integrated corporation. These are, however, minor criticisms of an important study that reframes aspects of the evolution of a historically transformative movement in relation to long-ignored markets, products, and entrepreneurs.