Books

Only Benjamin Shepard, who links personal narrative and movement analysis with uncommon felicity, uses his own experiences to significantly deepen his article's insights,
- Geoffrey Kurtz for Logos, Logos 2.4, Fall 2003

The Beach Beneath the Streets: Exclusion, Control, and Play in Public Space
Ben Shepard and Greg Smithsimon.
(Under contract with State University Press of New York Press.)
Link. (click here to purchase)

Community Projects as Social Activism: From Direct Action to Direct Services and Back Again
Ben Shepard.
Under contract with Sage.

Queer Political Performance and Protest: Play, Pleasure, and Social Movement
Ben Shepard
2009, Routledge. Link.
Purchase the softcover book through Routledge (discount code ER166)
Download reviews for this book here.

• Review by Matt G Mutchler in Sexualities Journal, 2011  (link)

Play, Creativity, and Social Movements
Ben Shepard
2010,  Routledge. Link.(click here to purchase)

• Review by Lawrence Bogad in Liminalities  (link)

From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the
Era of Globalization
Ben Shepard and Ronald Hayduck editors
2002 Verso Press. Link.
Read review of From ACT UP to the WTO;

• Review by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in the Monthly Review (link)
• Review by David Leyfield in Class & Capital (link)
• Review by Douglas Yates in New Political Science, (link)
• Review by Gregory Cowan in Progress in Developmet Studies (link) 

White Nights and Ascending Shadows: An Oral History of the San Francisco AIDS Epidemic
Ben Shepard.
1997, Cassell Press. Link.
(NOTE: this book is now out of print. ( You can download a free copy of the book here.)

About White Nights and Ascending Shadows from (The Guide, Summer 1998).

“History not only moves quickly--it is, in essence, what happened yesterday--but it is also quickly forgotten. This is especially true when many of the people who made it are gone or dying. Benjamin Heim Shepard's beautifully composed, and wonderfully moving White Nights and Ascending Shadows: An Oral History of the San Francisco AIDS Epidemic is a fine and telling history of how one city faced--and still faces--the endless effects of AIDS.

“Based in interviews and oral histories with 30 people with AIDS, Benjamin Shepard manages to piece together more than three decades (1968-1998) of gay male life and culture. The interviews here chart not only the progress of AIDS in the gay community, but document the many manifestations of gay culture that occurred before and in response to the epidemic. Alternatively brave, fragile, furious, and mournful the men interviewed here speak their minds and force their visions and politics upon us in unforgettable ways. As a cultural, political, and medical history, White Nights and Ascending Shadows is an important book, and the men who speak throughout it are determined that we remember who they were and what they did to preserve their lives, their families, and their culture. --Michael Bronski