Ordinary folk enliven histories. People make stories relatable, illustrating how individuals and communities adopted or challenged sexual and gender norms or imagined alternative possibilities. Brett Coutts puts these erotic lives at the center of his evocative queer male history of New Zealand during World War II. It confirms much of what we know about Allied men who embodied and expressed diverse homoerotic behaviors and queer selfhoods beyond traditional soldiering but marks a notable shift in form and focus, privileging chronology over themes and people over policy.