Erasmus, Leonardo da Vinci, King James I, Francis Bacon, Frederick the Great, Tchaikovsky, Diaghilev, Ernst Rohm, and E.M. Forster. The legacies they left to the world are as varied as their talents and temperaments, yet all shared a single predilection -- homosexuality. Now one of the most foremost historians of our time provides a thought provoking look at these and other homosexual men of genius in society, politics, literature and the arts in this first serious study of the problems and contributions of the homosexual through the ages.