The Stonewall Riots of 1969, when thousands protested in the streets of New York in response to a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, have long been regarded as the most important event in U.S. LGBTQ history. Whether they are seen as the starting point or turning point in the history of LGBT activism, the riots have become an iconic symbol of resistance to gender and sexual oppression as well as a key episode in the mobilization of one of the most important social movements of the last 50 years.

Despite the widely-recognized significance of the Stonewall Riots, most people know little about what happened over those six days at the Stonewall Inn. Nor do they know much about the earlier developments that contributed to the eruption of queer protests that summer, or the changes experienced by the LGBT movement in the weeks and months that followed, or even the ways in which the riots came to influence the New York City, the country and the world.

That has changed.

In the powerful volume The Stonewall Riots (NYU Press, $35), Marc Stein has collected 200 documents from a variety of sources published across the United States between ’65 and ’73 that consider the diverse perspectives on what actually happened during the Stonewall Riots.  Stein also explores the developments in the ’60s that led to the uprising and the mass mobilization that followed in the ’70s to understand the ways in which the Riots effected change.

The Stonewall Riots offers colorful descriptions of gay bars and bathhouses, campy stories of queer resistance, courageous accounts of protests, powerful narratives of police repression, and inspiring examples of political empowerment.  Stein includes photographs; articles from the alternative and LGBT press including The Village Voice, the Berkeley Bard, The Los Angeles Advocate, Transvestia; state court decisions; first-person accounts; political fliers; and song lyrics.