Ode to Boy, Vol. 2 is a refreshingly readable collection of literature devoted to same-sex attraction from the 19th Century through the war poets. Includes works from James Silk Buckingham, Lord Byron, Disraeli, Gogol, Thoreau, Melville, Whitman, Bayard Taylor, Ernst Haeckel, John Addington Symonds, Henry James, Stanley Lane-Poole, Wilde, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, Housman, Cather, Stein, Thomas Mann, Renee Vivien, Forster, D.H. Lawrence, H.D., Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, Lawrence of Arabia, and Wilfred Owen. Hale's introductions to the authors are to the point and sometimes witty, specifying why the author or work is included in the volume and sometimes providing a larger biographical scope.