Drag: Combing Through the Big Wigs of Show Business

This book gives me all the feels. It's a beautiful, dishy, and heartfelt valentine to drag. Writer Frank DeCaro gives a breezy but comprehensive look at drag through the ages, with tons of photos and personal interviews with Big Queens past and present. Come for the Ru Paul Drag Race Alums, stay for the Charles Pierces and Craig Russells and Jim Baileys!

A beautifully made hardcover book that any lover of drag should not hesitate to buy. Lots of great info about drag herstory. If all you know is RuPaul’s Drag Race you simply must pick this up to fill in all the gaps that came before the reality show. It’s a no brainer!

The book is cleverly written, but there is NO INDEX! It's impossible to look up anyone written about in the book. Ant there is NO mention of Jose Saria, who founded the drag Court system which is world wide. It is an amusing and bitchy read, but worthless as a reference book.

Buy this book NOW! It’s surreal to live in a time where this book exists. The thoroughness, the attention to detail, the gamut of “types” discussed .. I’m 110 pages in - not even halfway - and I’m constantly learning. I knew a lot about drag - both mainstream and not so mainstream- before reading this book, but this is truly an encyclopedia that has expanded my knowledge exponentially.

I bought this book because I am a fan of Frank Decaro. I would listen to his daily SiriusXM radio show and learn a lot about the inner workings in Hollywood and Broadway along with daily doses of pop culture. He and his co-host Doria Biddle always delivered laughs and information. I was sad to see the show, along with the station canceled.When I saw that Decaro was writing this book and it was available for pre-sale I ordered immediately. I am glad I did. Bruce Vilanch says, I believe, in the forward that with this book the reader is getting not a book about drag but an encyclopedia of drag. That is correct! This book is well research, and the layout made it a fantastic read. I always enjoy learning about new topics, and Decaro made this worthwhile.

More than just a coffee table book, Drag: Combing Through the Big Wigs of Show Business is truly a must-have for drag performers and drag lovers alike. The pictures are GORGEOUS. It's a great starter to be in-the-know of one of the richest part of queer culture that the world has ever seen. However, I did have a few gripes:My biggest one was, for starters, how they implied that the film, Tangerine, was a drag movie. Now, I'll give them credit that they did put quotes around "drag," but it still made me cringe because of just how inaccurate that is. Tangerine is just not a drag movie, in aligning the trans actresses with drag it essentially negates their gender identity as actual trans women, on and off screen. The author also had that same cringey and awkward tone when mentioning Hedwig as well, and oddly the way Hedwig was glossed over in general felt like a biased move on the author's (or editor's) part, like I got a sense that they really don't care much for Hedwig and it showed. He also credited Neil Patrick Harris as being the "original Hedwig on Broadway" when we all know that's not true, sure he was the original for the 2014 revival, but he makes it sound as NPH was THE original Hedwig. I could understand why they'd mention Danish Girl and Dallas Buyers Club since those roles were played by cis men playing trans women, but again, it's still invalidating and implies that trans women/characters in films are still men in drag. Trans drag does exist and trans performers are very valid and alive and well, but the way it was written here was just awfully clunky and again, very awkward and cringe-y. It was clearly written by someone who isn't very knowledgeable on trans drag or at most just doesn't know how to effectively write about trans drag and trans performers, like I appreciated the attempt but it felt wrong and just wasn't written properly. It's a shame because those trans movies and those characters deserved way better coverage here, like they do belong in this book, but it was just poorly executed. It really soured this reader with just how many times the author did this, and not even with just Hedwig, Tangerine, etc. but even saying that Herman Munster, because he was zapped by thousands of volts and turned into a woman, may be TV's first trans character? Like, how so??? The statement was just weird and for it to be presented as factual, even if it was trying to be funny or clever, just didn't make sense and again emphasizes my point and my gripe with the way this author writes about trans characters and trans performers, he is just not good at writing on them!I thought the format of this book was off, like there were way too many interviews dispersed throughout the chapter which made each chapter read very clunky and all over the place and oftentimes hard to follow. I wished they could have kept the drag interviews to the end as a separate chapter all together, it was just weird to read on the history of drag and then suddenly, 2-5 (even 12!!) interviews smacked in the middle that didn't always quite relate to the time period/era of that chapter, that or even if it did, after awhile they felt like filler/padding. The interviews were fabulous, yes, and very entertaining, but there were just too many of them crammed in-between chapters, it was a mess, especially when, I kid you not, the last five chapters were ALL INTERVIEWS!!! This book should have been called Drag: The Interviews. And while there IS an index, it's just an index for the photos/credits though, and even that felt all over the place and hard to follow. The index for finding specific drag performers doesn't exist here, which is just plain strange.And lastly, I just wish there was more historical content. There were more pictures and interviews than actual drag history, like it would have been nice if they were more in-depth on, for example, the Pansy Era, or could have went deeper into drag icons like Rae Bourbon (who was so incredibly fascinating!) but he barely gets a mention.Thankfully, there are plenty of books on drag that may have what this book doesn't, and vice versa. I wasn't entirely impressed by this one, personally, despite how much I really wanted to love it, for the most part for me it was disappointing. It's not exhaustive enough to be a long read, and yet it took FOREVER for me to be done with it because of its many issues. I'll give the author props, though, for attempting to cram as much of drag history and as many drag legends as possible in a single book, that is NOT easy, so still, I do recommend it despite its shortcomings.

This is a great, fun history of Drag old & new. The pictures alone are reason enough to get this book, but the words are delightful, too! Frank DeCaro has really done a great job putting all of these drag queens together in one place without any bloodshed and digging in deeper than most authors do. I love this book!!

this book is a must have for anyone who is interested in the history of drag. The book has everything...pictures,stories, and kind of gives you the timetable of DRAG in the US. I just got this yesterday and cannot put it down!

Great read. Nice book!