SOURCE: "Injustice for Some: Randy Shilts Indicts the U.S. Military's Treatment of Gays and Lesbians," in Chicago Tribune—Books, May 30, 1993, pp. 5, 10.

In the following review, Todes offers a positive assessment of Conduct Unbecoming.

This book is water torture. Drop by drop, vignette after vignette, the reader is moved by one unconscionable story after another about the treatment of homosexuals in American military service. The narrative starts from the beginning at Valley Forge, with the debt owed to the gay general Von Steuben for training the Revolutionary Army in the modern ways originated by a gay king, Frederick the Great of Prussia. This debt is elaborated against the stark background of gay volunteers being drummed out of service before the assembled ragtag band for loving one another unnaturally. The story moves briskly to the beginnings of Vietnam, and concentrates on the period from that time to just before...