*received for free from netgalley for honest review* This was such a great read! Honestly got this book on a whim and it was so good i hated having to put it down! would buy.

<i>And Then I Danced</i> is a memoir by LGBT activist Mark Segal, from his days at Stonewall through the present. He was not afraid to jump into any area he saw in need of help and met many influential people through the years as a result. This was an interesting and entertaining memoir. Adam Barr did an excellent job narrating the audiobook.

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me an audio ARC of this book.

Very interesting exploration of LGBTQ history. A little dry in places, but that is true of all books of this genre.

Absolutely fascinating, heartbreaking, and inspiring book about the author, Mark Segal’s journalism career and life as a queer man in the time of the LGBTQ movement. His writing is engaging and his obvious lived experience seeps from each page. Thank you, Mark for sharing your journey and gift with us.

Important book illustrating one man's presence and influences in the long fight for gay rights in America. So I can understand why some people have commented on 'ego' and 'name-dropping', but I'm in awe that Mark Segal was physically present as both eyewitness and crusader during so many key events in the historic fight for gay rights and equality.

I'm glad so much detail was included. For me, that signified that Segal's purpose was to record historic moments in time, and not just tout his own brush with infamy. There are so many crucial details included that we all should be aware of and not forget.

Segal's memoir is so much more. As the history unfolds, it also gives a bit of insight into was people were feeling, how it was experienced and how it actually affected individuals while it unfolded. Many of the historical events, shared here, are available through many other sources. Important facts we need to be aware of and never forget. But here we have them shared in a more human perspective, personally lived and forever remembered.

I received a copy from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Mark Seal is a giant figure of change and human rights here in Philadelphia. I remember some of the things he talks about since they were happening as I was a young girl in north Philly struggling with the realization that I was gay.
It was the late 70's, early 80's. The Aids epidemic was just becoming front-page news; the gay cancer! I was terrified that I would get it, mainly because we had no idea how it was passed, and in my area of the city, no one claimed to be gay out loud.
I found the Philadelphia Gay News, which Mr. Segal was then the editor, and found not only was I not alone someone was working got make this life easier. I found d my tribe, and with Mr.Segal's unknown help, I found d my pride.
Gay or straight, history is important. We can never forget where we came from or those who gave their lives, their blood, and sweat to make life more equal for those who always felt disenfranchised.
The stories here are real, as are the people and the pain. But so are the triumphs and the challenges won.
Well read, engaging, and entertaining. Highly recommended.
Thanks to @netgalley and Orange sky Audio for the chance to listen in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion

Mark Segal is a legend in the US fight for equality for the LGBT movement. His autobiography covers the start of his journey as a young gay man in New York City to his activism in his home city of Philadelphia and covers his work from the 70's right up to the present day. As someone who is lucky enough to live in a country where same sex couples are given the same rights under the law as their straight counterparts, its easy to forget just how much work has been done by people like Mark to get us to this point. We really are standing on the shoulders of giants. Mark's book is an important social history but also a lesson in how to advocate in a way that will get people to pay attention. I salute you Mr Segal and thank you for the amazing work you and your peers have done.

I had not heard of Mark Segal before listening to this book, but he has clearly pliad an important role in LGBT rights. I didn't live the voice of the narrator, but I managed to push past that as the story was so interesting.

Mark Segal is among those who were there at the beginning of the Gay Rights movement. Since Stonewall and his involvement in the founding of the Gay Liberation Front, Segal has been a lifelong activist for equal rights for LGBT people. This book is his memoir.

And Then I Danced takes us from Segal's childhood as a poor Jewish kid in the South Philly projects to his presence at the Stonewall riot and involvement in the rise of New York's Gay Liberation Front, and then to his return home to Philadelphia where he has been a primary mover in advancing the LGBT cause, and is the publisher of the Gay Philadelphia News.

Along the way Segal was part of the Gay Raiders known for his "zaps" - targeted disruptive political actions designed to garner publicity and help educate the public about gay issues and concerns. The daring and visibility of their zaps increased quickly and gained national attention. Segal zapped The Tonight Show, The Mike Douglas Show, The Today Show and finally, the CBS Evening News with Walter Kronkite. The network cut away when Segal ran into the studio while Kronkite was delivering his nightly report. Kronkite was so impressed with Segal's daring that, after the show resumed, he reported on the incident live. He questioned Segal later about why he'd done it, after which Kronkite began regularly including reports on gay issues and concerns on his nightly news broadcast. He and Segal ended up becoming friends.

I got the sense from this audiobook that Mark Segal is an easy guy to like. Though the book covers some serious topics (including AIDS in a segment I thought too short) the tone throughout is conversational, with Segal occasionally displaying a wry sense of humor.

The other impression I came away with is that Segal is an accomplished politician, in the best sense of the word. He had to be in order to have accomplished all that he has in the big city environment of Philadelphia. Much of his later story is one of the struggle for gay rights as a local, political fight with national implications, and his political wins are impressive.

Originally published in 2015, the audiobook version was released yesterday. The audiobook is narrated by Adam Barr whose smooth voice compliments Mark's story well.

I really enjoyed listening to this audiobook and would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in understanding more about the struggle for LGBT equality, particularly from the political perspective.

I'm embarrassed to say, I didn't know who Mark Segal was, but Walter Cronkite, and a generation who watched him, does. A gay activist almost all his life, he was involved in Stonewall and the Marriage Equality Act and so much more. It was overly detailed on some things, like his passion project for gay senior housing project in Philly. Being involved in so many political events, there is understandably a lot of name dropping. For many of us, I think this book will generate the need to dig into some of these stories through other accounts.

This is an important accounting of the history of the gay rights movement, but I was hoping for a little more depth on the memoir side. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Adam Barr and he did a great job. I would love to see the physical version of this book as I understand there are photos and it would probably be easier to follow all those names.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance review copy of this edition.

This engaging and inspiring memoir, written in an accessible prose style, details the author’s involvement in LGBT activism over more than half a century and in HIV activism from the beginning. Not only is it fascinating to have a first-hand account of his methods and of controversies in the movement, but it is also helpful to have a reminder of how far we have come.

However, he falls into two traps common in works like this. First, he presents a view of LGBT history that is sometimes sanitized. For example, on transgender issues, how many more dispatches do we need from that alternate universe in which the TERF movement is a predominantly gay male thing? Second, he often strays from the topic to tell the reader how awe-inspiring he is. He drops so many names that the second half of the book often comes across as a textual equivalent of a brag wall, particularly in the chapter about Elton John’s concert.

Another thing that leaves me puzzled is that the author sometimes either leaves others’ motives unexplained or does not understand them himself and is not curious. While a memoirist has no duty to read minds, I still expect more on this matter, based on a combination of observation and understanding of human nature. He was there and knew those people; most readers were not and did not.

Being a member of the alphabet mafia, I was especially excited to listen to the audiobook, And Then I Danced. The history of the LGBTQ+ movement that it included was amazing to hear from the perspective of someone who was there while it all unfolded. Through the decades, it's interesting to follow Segal's life from coming out, Stonewall, activism and more; however, the turn off through all the amazing adventures is the constant name dropping as he gains status. This aside, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about LGBTQ+ history told with raw passion and love of the movement and moment.

Well this author certainly knows how to drop a name, and lots of them. There were lists and lists of people he had met, worked with, slept with etc.; unfortunately this took away from what could have been a really interesting story, and made it a bit of a drag.

Why spend an entire chapter describing the Philadelphia Freedom Concert, unless it was to list Elton John's tantrums, and the chapter on building the seniors accommodation (a great achievement) was so boring, an example being, did we need to know who was responsible for security on the project?.

This was a disappointing read.

Thank you to NetGalley and OrangeSky Audio for the advance audiobook of this memoir in exchange for an honest review.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I never heard of Mark Segal before. I really have been trying to learn more about LGBTQ+ history. However, after listening to this book, I think my understanding of the struggle for gay rights has doubled. From his experience as a teenager at Stonewall, through the founding of the Gay Liberation Front, from the early days of AIDS to the Philadelphia Freedom concert, with a cast of friends and associates ranging from Frank Kameny to Barack Obama, Segal has seen it all. Perhaps more importantly, as far as this book goes, he has the journalistic skills to write about it in a comprehensive manner, with enough personal and historic details to make it both entertaining and educational.

I don’t know how Segal himself would have done as a narrator, but narration by Adam Barr is excellent—I felt as though I was listening to someone tell his own story, at a really long cocktail party. Even some bits that might have been a bit dry were told in a voice that made them feel interesting and important. I had a tear in my eye more than once.

TW: Violence, anti-same sex rights, discrimination, death of family

*****SPOILERS*****
About the book: On December 11, 1973, Mark Segal disrupted a live broadcast of the CBS Evening News when he sat on the desk directly between the camera and news anchor Walter Cronkite, yelling, "Gays protest CBS prejudice!" He was wrestled to the studio floor by the stagehands on live national television, thus ending LGBT invisibility. But this one victory left many more battles to fight, and creativity was required to find a way to challenge stereotypes surrounding the LGBT community. Mark Segal's job, as he saw it, was to show the nation who gay people are: our sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers.Because of activists like Mark Segal, whose life work is dramatically detailed in this poignant and important memoir, today there are openly LGBT people working in the White House and throughout corporate America. An entire community of gay world citizens is now finding the voice that they need to become visible.
Release Date: September 14th, 2015
Genre: Memoir
Pages: 400
Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

What I Liked:
• Raw and straight forward
• Audiobook was read very well
• Learning about gay rights through the 70's

What I Didn't Like:
• I can't give over how he lived off his parents
• Sometimes it felt like he was full of himself the way he talked.

Overall Thoughts: This book was interesting to me as it not only dealt with being queer but also growing up poor. It is such an unique experience to deal with. It also made me sad. Sad because on one hand he talks about people knowing these situations that happened (it was the 70's so I don't think the kids today do) and all the struggles to just so little in return.

I found it pretty crappy that Mark was living off of his already poor parents while his mother was going through cancer so he could fight for gay rights. Not sure why he couldn't get a job and fight for rights.

Final Thoughts: A good audiobook that I found interesting and sucked me in. Worth a listen. Breaks my heart that people have to fight so hard to just be able to love publicly.

Thanks to Netgalley and the Orangesky Audio for the copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own

Listening to this memoir by LGBTQ activist Mark Segal was so enjoyable and impactful for me. As a younger queer person, I'm not yet as versed in LGBTQ history as my elders who lived through it, and taking the time to listen to Mark's account of LGBTQ history was a fantastic way to learn some of my history.

This audiobook was definitely enriched by the fact that Segal narrates the book himself. He has a nice tone of voice, and hearing him speak his own words was a great way to listen to this audiobook.

Segal has a fantastic writing style that is humorous, educating, and succinct. I definitely recommend this book to all queer people; it's important to learn our history from the people who lived it while they're still here to tell it. I'm glad Segal's words are being immortalized in this audiobook, and I'm sure it will carry through the next generations.

I don’t typically read memoirs but I have a strong interest in LGBT history so this appealed to me, The audiobook is narrated by the author which adds an extra layer of personality to the story which is already extremely personal.

This story is one most people probably are not familiar with. Mark’s transition from young activist to powerful political influencer and publisher is fascinating.

This book is an absolute must read for anyone interested in queer history.

Segal's account of Stonewall and how it set him on to being an activist for the next decades of his life was fascinating. I loved the way that he humanized every person involved in these sorts of things, he never once falls into the trap of idolizing activists or turning them into larger than life heroes.

There were a ton of recognizable names and it was interesting to see which political leaders have always stood for or against the lgbt community. The picture section was especially fun, I loved every story that Segal told of himself and the Obama's.

This was a personal account of a man in a movement much larger than himself, and I enjoyed every bit of it. The audiobook was well narrated and easy to follow.