Informative, interesting and a great exploration of the range of different causes and groups that have come together for the sake of solidarity. Lots of new information about activists and protests that I did not previously know about.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC.

If you're looking for a book that shows how any protest isn't just a one issue escalation, and brings you to tears about how amazing humans are-try this one!

Shoulder to Shoulder is a book, as the subtitle says, about "queer history of solidarity, coalition and chaos", exploring the history of solidarity in the 20th and 21st century. It explores a range of movements and political moments, from the Black Panthers to Just Stop Oil, via sex workers' rights, gay rights, Mad Pride, AIDS activism, support for asylum seekers, and more. Everything is entangled, so though there are separate chapters on different areas, these often bleed into each other, and there's a particular interest in this and the ways in which different groups of people end up in solidarity and actively working together. At the same time, Hall acknowledges some of the difficulties, often down to people's opinions and media representation, and this is perhaps most notable in the chapter about Pits and Perverts, highlighting how both LGBTQ people and working-class miners were demonised in the 1980s.

Though there is a lot of focus on English-speaking activism particularly in the UK and US, there is also discussion of movements and solidarity across the globe, and particularly the parts about AIDS activism in Africa were interesting and not always in narratives of AIDS responses. The 'chaos' of the subtitle does infuse the book, sometimes making it a bit confusing around who or what something is because there's so many different groups and people covered all at once, but it has an energy that celebrates this multi-faceted nature. It provides an introduction to a lot of movements at once and is ideal for people looking for inspiration and hope in the current climate (both literal and metaphorical climate), particularly for queer people who may sometimes need the reminder of the history of queer solidarity with other movements, rather than being isolated.