As transgender people strive to gain more acceptance and legal protections, they will soon have a hefty new resource to assist them - a 672-page book, written by scores of transgender contributors, that encompasses social history, gender politics and wide-ranging advice on health, law, relationships and many other matters.

Encyclopedic in scope, conversational in tone, and candid about complex sexual issues, the Oxford University Press book being released in mid-May is titled Trans Bodies, Trans Selves - a deliberate echo of a pioneering feminist health-resource book, Our Bodies, Ourselves that appeared more than 40 years ago

The goal for Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, she writes, was "to make it as radical as its predecessor" - an act of empowerment through which transgender people exert more control over the available information about their lives.

The book's chapters cover a wide range of topics, including race, religion, disabilities, employment, mental health, sexuality and parenting. There are miniprofiles of prominent transgender people from around the world, and analyses of gender-bending books and films, such as Some Like it Hot and Tootsie.

Its extensive glossary includes such terms as genderqueer, heteronormativity, omnisexual and transfeminism. "The terminology changes so quickly, you really can't keep up," said Erickson-Schroth."