I was thrilled to read this. There remain far fewer transgender historical monographs in the field, compared to the number published in other sub-disciplines. This biography of Harry Benjamin, an endocrinologist whose research and promotion of the effect of hormones on the human body, gender, and perceptions of health, fills a gap in our understanding of the formation of gender and transgender in the 20th century.

Li’s monograph is well-researched, pulling from a variety of sources to build a fleshy portrait of the man, but not only him; as with all good histories, Li produces a landscape of the era for the reader to understand the context of the individual. Benjamin, however, was a man beyond his time, thinking of gender in ways more similar to our own period than his — but that is the point: Benjamin is one of the forerunners of the way we think about gender today, as a spectrum. It is the contrast between him and his contemporaries which helps the reader visualize this landscape.

The chapters are chronological (rather than strictly thematic), offering the reader a clear trajectory of how concepts of gender and transgender — and here, especially — how the use of hormones became mainstream and effected changes in how medicine and healthcare as a whole.

I hesitate to write a full academic review as the digital review copy I had expired! Readers, this is a worthy book to read to grasp an often un-addressed aspect of transgender history!

Trans medical history is one of my favorite topics of research, and I really loved everything I learned from this book! I learned so much from this and it was so well researched. I knew alot about Magnus Hirchfield going into this but very little about the development of trans medicine after him.

I do think it was very dense and not always the best organized. It wasn’t always chronological , and often times went on pages long tangents about side topics that had very little to do with the main subject. I wish it was edited down and organized a bit more thoughtfully.

I’ve read quite a lot of books on trans history, but I’ve never really read anything about the cis doctors who pioneered trans healthcare (other than Dr. Hirschfeld), which made this an interesting new perspective for me. The topic is fascinating & the book is definitely well researched and well written. My only minor complaint is that for me, even as someone who reads a lot of academic work and non-fiction, the book took me ages to get through (which is why I’m posting this review only 3 days before the deadline for my ARC, oops) as focus of the book is on Dr. Benjamin as a man, rather than on his work in trans healthcare. Still a great biography that I would recommend, but I did find myself skimming parts.

*4.25
As someone unfamiliar with Harry Benjamin, this book was an informative one. Wondrous Transformations follows his life, role in hormonal research, and contributions to what became the foundation of transgender medicine. I found the section where Li discusses Benjamin's work the Magnus Hirschfeld and the Institute for Sexual Science very interesting! I consider this a must read for anyone interested in learning more about LGBTQ+ history.

It was really cool to read and learn more about a person who is such a part of trans history. I hadn't known much before about Harry Benjamin, and I'm glad to have learned more.

Alison Li writes a compassionate and immensely readable book about the incredibly Dr. Harry Benjamin and his patients. She traces his life from Germany to his role in hormonal research and his work with transgender patients. In focusing on Benjamin's life and research for a good chunk of the book, Li connects the changing European landscape with the new medical beliefs ("rejuvenation" and the Hirschfield Institute for ex.).

By grounding the reader in the medical history of Dr. Benjamin and his colleagues, she gives us enough background so we're able to understand the difficulties that face Dr. Benjamin's patients. One of the maddening parts of the book is how Li shows that progress was constantly halted/detoured by "medical gatekeepers." This book would be excellent for medical students as well as anyone interested in the overlooked work of Dr. Benjamin.

As an aside, Li mentions Gertrude Atherton (famous patient of Dr. Benjamin) through the book and I hope she writes a biography of this woman she sounds like such a fascinating woman.

Isn't this a great cover? This little history is a biography of Harry Benjamin, one of the first doctors to prescribe hormonal replacement therapy to transgender people. It charts the life of Dr. Benjamin, from his youth in Berlin (what a wonderful soul he was!) to his early years in New York attempting to cure tuberculosis, to his middle-aged celebrity involved with the "rejuvenation cure", to finally his later life, where he helped some of the first transgender people access hormonal treatments.

I found myself really connecting to Mr. Benjamin through the pages and I grew to also wish to have known the man myself. Several sections were an absolute treat: I loved his early years and the passages around the first world war, as well as his celebrity connection to Gertrude Atherton and his first interactions with gender-diverse patients. The book lagged a bit in the middle; I believe this probably from a lack of interesting source material, and at times it felt a bit like a who's who of Harry Benjamin's circle.

In a related way, the book only begins to talk about transgender topics in depth around 2/3 into it. I'm worried the advertising for this book will leave some people frustrated—This is not a book on transgender history but a biography of a man associated with its history. I loved it because I love history and biographies, but I don't know if everyone will.

The minutiae of transgender topics also inspire a lot of passion (both good and bad) and I found the author's tone wonderfully balanced for the subject matter. I have a very fraught relationship with more modern conceptions of gender identity (in an appropriate metaphor, I lived a few years as a Benjamin Scale 4, I'm now at a 2) and nowadays I find a lot of solace in historical concepts of gender and sexuality. The world is not always kind to me about it, but this book felt like a comfortable little blanket to wrap around myself in the meantime. Rather than try to make excuses for ideas or terminology, the book relates the history as it was while reminding the reader to be sympathetic through anecdotes of the literal life-saving care he could give his patients. I love that. The love from his transgender clients is palpable in their stories, and I am so so so glad we have this biography of this man now.

Anyways, I love Harry Benjamin and I loved this book. Pick it up (or better yet, go bug your library to get it)!