Jones, Randy and Mark Bergo. Macho Man: The Disco Era and Gay America’s Coming Out. 2009. 232 p. Praeger, $31.96 (9780275999629). Gr. 10-12.

Whether at a wedding, bar mitzvah or weekend party, most people have danced the Y.M.C.A. Jones, the original cowboy of the Village People, and Bergo, an accomplished journalist/biographer, share their eyewitness accounts of the rise of disco in America beginning with a historical overview of famous pop icons from ancient history. Their personal dialogues and experiences interwoven with research keeps the story of changing sexual values readable. What Sister Wendy did for great art, Jones and Bergo do for this important period of cultural history. It truly does take a “Village…and a Cowboy and an Indian…and the Navy and the Y.M.C.A” to tell the story of America’s coming out. – Laurie Spurling