A Wild and Precious Life

A lively, intimate memoir from an icon of the gay rights movement, describing gay life in 1950s and 60s New York City and her longtime activism which opened the door for marriage equality. Edie Windsor became internationally famous when the Supreme Court ruled in her favor in her case seeking recognition from the US government for her marriage to her partner Thea Spyer. The ruling set the stage for marriage equality in the US and vaulted Edie into the spotlight. Edie embraced her role as a leader in the LGBT community; she had been living a groundbreaking life for decades. In this memoir, which she began before her death in 2017 and which was completed by her co-writer, Edie recounts her childhood in Philadelphia, her realization that she was a lesbian, and her active social life in Greenwich Village's underground gay scene. In the midst of dancing and breaking hearts all over town, Edie worked her way up to be one of the first female programmers for IBM, achieving their highest technical ranking, and was instrumental in developing their software. In the early 1960s Edie met Thea Spyer, an expat from a Dutch Jewish family that fled the Nazis, and a widely-respected psychologist. Their partnership lasted forty-six years, until Thea’s death in 2009. Edie found love again, marrying Judith Kasen in 2016. A remarkable portrait of an iconic woman, gay life in New York in the second half of the twentieth century, and the rise of LGBT activism.