In all of his books, Randy Shilts manages to write about history in the most sprawling, gossipy, harsh yet idealistic way. Its what I imagine Russian novels would be like, if I actually liked Russian novels. It's so interesting to be reading his last book and to see all the different social movements - civil rights, gay rights, women's rights - converge and both influence and perplex the lives of people in the military.

There's so much in here that I feel like I should have known about years ago. I remember being in high school, and the kids in my history class literally begging our AP History teacher to do a section on Vietnam. We were so earnest, and we totally got shot down. "It's too painful," said Ms Whatever-Her-Name-Was. "I'm not revisiting it." None of us even had the imagination then to ask for the first Gulf War. And none of us even knew there had been a Korean war.

Our history classes always ended with World War II. The Siege at Normandy. That guy kissing that girl in the middle of the ticker tape parade. We were so tired of World War II. Tired of the Nazis. Tired of Winston Churchill. Tired of France. Tired of the bomb, and Oppenheimer, and Stalin and of watching Empire of the Sun over and over again.

Is that how it was for everybody? History beginning with Egyptian Pharoahs, and ending with World War II?