Lillian Faderman, famed lesbian author, says of Dr. Sears' work that it is "a monumental book which delineates the formative eras of lesbian and gay history as they were lived in the South...an absorbing, compelling portrait of a world that other lesbian and gay historians have largely neglected... beautifully written, very precious--- (an) indispensable--addition to our record of the past."

Kirkus Review calls Lonely Hunters "groundbreaking" and says that the history book is "well documented and compellingly presented with great emotional range...consistently engaging yet never historically simplistic." Kirkus also praises the book as "a fine contribution to both southern history and gay history that shouldn't be overlooked by enthusiasts in either field."

David Mixner, well-known political activist and author has christened Lonely Hunters as "an important historical record that is long overdue." He says it "captures not only the graceful and enriching stories of.... the South," but "the enormous courage of gays and lesbians who live daily in the face of adversity."

The Hudson Review's art critic, John Loughery, who is himself currently completing an exhaustive gay cultural history to be published next year, believes that "what George Chauncey did for prewar New York, James Sears has done for the postwar gay south. "Once started," he says, "Lonely Hunters is hard to put down, and its individual stories--both sad and heroic--are impossible to forget."

Historian Sears, according to John O'Brien, executive director of the Los Angeles-based ONE Institute, has recently been appointed acquisitions director for ONE's Southern Studies collection. ONE Institute is the oldest gay organization in the Western Hemisphere and houses the largest archive of gay and lesbian materials in the world.

O'Brien says that "Jim Sears is playing a major part in documenting" the South's gay history, while Sears himself told GayToday that "the South is a major battleground in the struggle for gay rights." Sears believes, he says, that "its critical (today) that activists and those who support gay rights initiatives understand the contributions and struggles that earlier generations of lesbian and gay Southerners have made."

Lonely Hunters uses diaries, letters, newspapers, subpoenaed testimony, court and legislative documents, and, most powerfully, personal interviews to paint its engrossing portrait of an entire region. Donn Teal, also an historian and author of the singular history of the Stonewall era written within that timeframe (1971), calls Sears "a profound student of the history of the American South and gays' struggles there," while from Duke University's Department of History, John Howard, Director of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Life studies, comments that Sears' work is "broad in its reach" as well as "ambitious and fascinating." Professor Howard exults, "At long last, we hear the voices of queer Southerners."

Author Sears is scheduled to make a nationwide tour on behalf of Lonely Hunters, with speaking engagements taking place between September 27, 1997 and April 17, 1998. His updated schedule for dozens of cities can be found on the Web at http://www.jtsears.com

Catherine Nicholson, Ph.D., co-founding editor of Sinister Wisdom, believes Sears has enveloped a generation of gay lives in their time and place "with an insightful, detailed analysis of the social and political context of a pivotal era of Southern history."

Jim Kepner, the undisputed godfather of American gay news journalism, and founder of the International Gay Archives, reflects on how Lonely Hunters has made "invaluable contributions to the job of finding psychological roots for Southern gays."

Lonely Hunters is Dr. Sears' first volume in a projected series of five that will, upon their completions, bring gay Southern history into the present. The distinguished scholar's work, according to Robert Rosenberg, whose documentary film, Before Stonewall, won high praise, "captures the peculiarities of the gay southern experience," and is "an important contribution to the growing body of gay historical literature that will inform and educate our communities for years to come."