A Wild and Precious Life: A Memoir, by Edie Windsor, is a lively, intimate memoir from a marriage equality icon of the gay rights movement, describing gay life in the 1950s and 1960s New York City and her longtime activism. Edie Windsor became internationally famous when she sued the US government, seeking federal recognition for her marriage to Thea Spyer, her partner of more than four decades. The Supreme Court ruled in Edie’s favor, a landmark victory that set the stage for full marriage equality in the US. Beloved by the LGBTQ community, Edie embraced her new role as an icon; she had already been living an extraordinary and groundbreaking life for decades.

In this memoir, which she began before passing away in 2017 and 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 electrifying underground gay scene during the 1950s. Edie was also one of a select group of trailblazing women in computing, working her way up the ladder at IBM and achieving their highest technical ranking while developing software. In the early 1960s Edie met Thea, an expat from a Dutch Jewish family that fled the Nazis, and a widely respected clinical psychologist. Their partnership lasted 44 years, until Thea died in 2009. Edie found love again, marrying Judith Kasen-Windsor in 2016.

A Wild and Precious Life is remarkable portrait of an iconic woman, gay life in New York in the second half of the 20th century, and the rise of LGBT activism. A lively, intimate memoir from a marriage equality icon of the gay rights movement, describing gay life in the 1950s and 60s New York City and her longtime activism.

The OutBook Book Club is supported by The Palm Springs Cultural Center and the Palm Springs Public Library. Selections are chosen by group members and highlight a mix of new LGBTQ+ releases and influential classics. OutBook meets on the first Wednesday of the month in the upstairs VIP room at the Palm Springs Cultural Center from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The book discussion starts at 7:00 p.m. (from 6:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. is a social mixer). For more information, please email book club coordinator Hubertus Zegers at [email protected] in advance of the meeting.