5,000 years." The Gay Book of Days was a gossipy, witty and lighthearted attempt to catalogue as many famous, and not so famous, gay men and lesbians as possible throughout history, ranging from Roman emperors, European kings and queens, famous writers and literary figures to the stars of Hollywood and television. For all its supposed frivolity, it was an important work at a time when the gay community was growing in confidence and visibility and was about to be struck unawares by the AIDS epidemic. Tellingly for the time, the book ends with a list headed "I Know They Are, You Know They Are, and They Know They Are, but Initials Will Just Have to Do", betraying the reality of the closet in those less open times. Greif and Grow also wrote a few books using different, sometimes female, nom de plumes - Jean Bach, Frederick S. Copely, Martin Lawrence and Leona Wesley Hunter. Irish years Greif was often asked to write an updated version of the Book of Days, to which he gave considerable thought during the 1990s, but he never got beyond the planning stages. Martin Greif and Larry Grow spent their latter years in Ballinadee, County Cork, Ireland, where they set up Orchard Hill Press in a deal with Sterling Publishing of NYC. Greif's last works were several books on chess and puzzles, and Irish-themed titles written as Mairtin O'Griofa. Grow died of a stroke associated with AIDS in 1991. Greif died of an AIDS-related illness in November 1996 at Cork University Hospital. Greif's nephew is Eric Greif, a lawyer and entertainment personality known first for a management career within the heavy metal musical genre in the 1980s and later within the legal profession. References 1938 births 1996 deaths American information and reference writers American publishers (people) American social sciences writers Irish writers People from the Bronx Stuyvesant High School alumni Princeton University alumni Hunter College alumni New York University faculty 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American businesspeople AIDS-related deaths in the Republic of Ireland American gay writers LGBT people from New York (state) American expatriates in Ireland 20th-century LGBT people