The Sixth Man: A Startling Investigation of the Spread of Homosexuality in America

The Sixth Man (1961) was a nonfiction bestseller by author Jess Stearn, a former Newsweek editor. According to John D'Emilio, a professor of history and former Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the book "dripped with venom and contempt" toward gays and lesbians. It was promoted as a, "Startling Investigation of the Spread of Homosexuality in America!"

Stearn claimed that in the course of his research for the book, he had "yet to meet a truly happy homosexual". As described by author Michael S. Sherry in Gay Artists in Modern American Culture (2007), "Little in Stearn's account was new, but it was packaged as if it were", and Stearn, "claimed to reveal the secrets of a 'growing homosexual population' ".

Contemporary critics and later reviewers have tended to dismiss the book as "mock shock", or as Sherry explains, "The pose of shock erased past moments of discovery and presented queerness as surprising and sinister".

Stearn later published The Grapevine: A Report on the Secret World of the Lesbian (1964), as well as a series of popular books dealing with subjects (often approvingly) such as astrology, reincarnation and psychic phenomena.