Los Angeles Times bestseller National Book Critics Circle Award Winner NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: The New York Times * NPR * Vogue * Gay Times * Artforum * “ Gay Bar is an absolute tour de force.” –Maggie Nelson "Atherton Lin has a five-octave, Mariah Carey-esque range for discussing gay sex.” – New York Times Book Review As gay bars continue to close at an alarming rate, a writer looks back to find out what’s being lost in this intimate, stylish, and indispensible celebration of queer history. Strobing lights and dark rooms; throbbing house and drag queens on counters; first kisses, last call: the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression—whatever your scene, whoever you’re seeking. But in urban centers around the world, they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin wondering: What was the gay bar? How have they shaped him? And could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it? In Gay Bar,  the author embarks upon a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub, and dive revealing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history. In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and dazzling as a disco ball, he time-travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970s to a warren of cruising tunnels built beneath London in the 1770s; from chichi bars in the aftermath of AIDS to today’s fluid queer spaces; through glory holes, into Crisco-slicked dungeons and down San Francisco alleys. He charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out—and a chance encounter one restless night that would change his life forever.  The journey that emerges is a stylish and nuanced inquiry into the connection between place and identity—a tale of liberation, but one that invites us to go beyond the simplified Stonewall mythology and enter lesser-known battlefields in the struggle to carve out a territory. Elegiac, randy, and sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry, a love story and an epic night out to remember. One of the New York Times Critics’ Top Books of 2021 New York Times Editors’ Choice  NPR’s Best Books of 2021 Artforum’s Best Books of 2021 Vogue ’s Best Books of 2021 Wall Street Journal ’s10 Best LGBTQ+ Books for Pride Month LitHub's Most Anticipated Books of 2021 Cosmopolitan 's Best LGBTQI+ Books of 2021 Debutiful's Best Books of February Queerty’s Best Holiday Reads “A beautiful, lyrical memoir…Atherton Lin has a five-octave, Mariah Carey-esque range for discussing gay sex.”  ― NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW “A remarkable debut. . . it’s a difficult book to pin down, but that’s what makes it so readable and so endlessly fascinating. . . Each observation is sharp and phrased beautifully; Atherton Lin wastes no words, and the ones he chooses are carefully considered. Gay Bar is a book that’s beyond impressive, and Atherton Lin’s writing is both extremely intelligent and refreshingly unpretentious.”  ― NPR "The treatment of time in the book — the way the present is peeled back to reveal the past — is beautiful, and original. Throughout there is a feeling of simultaneity, of queer lives and histories moving in parallel, of nightlife as a site of pleasure, play and resistance…How movingly he replicates it here, with his wide, strobing intellect, enlivening skepticism, rascally allure.”  ― Parul Sehgal, NEW YORK TIMES “A beautiful amble through the world of gay bars . . . a rich tapestry of history, theory, and criticism.”  ― VANITY FAIR “Brilliantly written . . . Atherton Lin writes as though he himself is a sign of the times. With gusto and a sense of abandon he describes his own hunger for excitement, with scenes that are gloriously locked in the present moment.”  ― Colm Tóibín, THE GUARDIAN “This deservedly award-winning, multifaceted book examines the role of the gay bar on both a micro and a macro level.  Come for the history lesson, stay for the party .”― WALL STREET JOURNAL “For when you really miss going out… This book will make you miss it even more. Atherton Lin’s stylish debut explores the history and cultural resonance of gay bars…It’s a wistful exploration of queer life, history, liberation, and identity. And feels especially vital right now when we’re all stuck inside.”  ― THE SKIMM “A detailed, frank and brilliantly personal account…Already, Gay Bar reads like a cult classic.”  ― PAUL FLYNN, EVENING STANDARD “I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so happily surprised and enchanted by a book. Gay Bar is an absolute tour de force.”― MAGGIE NELSON “Jeremy Atherton Lin's personal history of queer nightlife is shot with vibrant intellectual adrenaline. With keen original insight, he celebrates the gay bar as a site of ribald, sensuous, and urgent resistance. A must-read for all.”― CATHY PARK HONG, author of MINOR FEELINGS “This book of creative nonfiction links theory, geography, and romantic memoir via the knowledge made availab