What Does "Military" Mean in Dave Cullen's Books and Writing?
On davecullen.com, "military" points to one specific subject: Dave Cullen's nonfiction book about gay soldiers serving under Don't Ask, Don't Tell. It is not a general military history or defense-policy section. If you arrived looking for war strategy, weapons, or geopolitics, this isn't that. If you want reporting on LGBT service members and the cost of hiding, it is directly on target.
The book behind the keyword
The site's source description names the project as DON'T FALL IN LOVE: THE SECRET LIVES OF TWO GAY SOLDIERS HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT, described as 27 years in the making and scheduled for May 4, 2027. The title itself signals the angle: two specific people, their relationship, and the secrecy DADT required.
That framing matters for what kind of "military" content this is:
- Subject: gay soldiers and gay spouses, not military operations
- Policy hook: Don't Ask, Don't Tell as the condition shaping the story
- Method: long-form narrative nonfiction built around individual lives
- Publisher positioning: listed alongside Cullen's previous books Columbine and Parkland
How it connects to Cullen's other work
Cullen's catalog on the site is true crime and investigative nonfiction, and the military book sits inside that same approach rather than beside it. Columbine and Parkland each take a public catastrophe and reconstruct it through people caught inside it. The military book applies that method to a quieter, slower catastrophe: service members legally required to conceal who they are.
The site's own keyword cluster makes the link explicit — "true crime," "gay soldiers," "military," and "transgender" appear together, with references to Don't Ask Don't Tell, Stonewall, Frank Kameny, and the Mattachine Society. So the "military" thread is really an LGBT-history thread that happens to run through the armed forces.
What this is not
Readers searching "military" often want something else. To save you time:
| If you want | This book is |
|---|---|
| Battle narratives, strategy, unit histories | Not that |
| Defense policy analysis or budget debates | Not that — DADT is context, not the thesis |
| A broad survey of LGBT military history | Narrower: two soldiers' lives |
| Narrative nonfiction about people under institutional pressure | A match |
How to decide if it fits your interest
Pick it up if you read Cullen for the reporting method — deep access, years of interviews, a story told through individuals rather than institutions. Pick it up if DADT-era LGBT history is your subject. Skip it if your interest in "military" is operational or historical in the conventional sense, because the book's center of gravity is the two soldiers and the secrecy, not the service itself.
For the fuller picture of the book's subject, the site's own page for Don't Fall in Love is the place to start, and the Columbine purchase page shows how Cullen's backlist is presented if you want to compare before committing.