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And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic | |||||||
 
| 80% Recommended by our customers. Publisher: Stonewall Inn Editions Catalog: Book Release date: 2000-04-09 Media: Paperback Number of pages: 656 Ean: 9780312241353 Book Isbn: 0312241356  Tip: compare prices with similar booksAuthor:
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 Written on October 8, 2005 Summary: And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic I was required to read this text for a class. I would not have normally picked something like this to read for pleasure. I found that this text is very attention grabbing, and it is extremly informational. I would recommend this text to others. Written on October 1, 2005 Summary: homage to hiv Shilts' great book shows us how much of the AIDS related suffering of the last twenty years could so easily have been avoided. The book opens with the July 4th 1976 bicentennial celebration of American independence and closes with the death of Hollywood star Rock Hudson, whose passing garnered the necessary oxygen of publicity that all the thousands of previous AIDS casualties could not. In between, the book revolves around the hedonistic community of San Francisco's Castro Street area and brings us an amazing array of villains, victims and plain heroes. The villains include the bathhouse owners, who used America's First Amendment to keep their businesses open even as it was blatantly obvious that they were a major conduit for the spread of the virus; Dr. Bob Gallo of America's National Cancer Institute, who put his own prestige ahead of everything else, normal scientific and academic ethics included; and the Reagan administration, which did as little as politically possible to stem the burgeoning plague that blighted America during those years. Because the air bridges between Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco helped spread the virus at breakneck speed, Shilts also introduces us to Gaetan Dugas, the Canadian air line steward, who is credited with infecting many of America's earliest victims. Shilts paints him as half victim and half villain. Dugas, he shows, went from being the pretty boy everybody in Castro Street wanted to bed to being the terminal AIDS case they all eventually feared. Rock Hudson, Liberace and other closet gays are likewise painted as half villains and half victims. Michael Foucault, the fashionable French philosopher, must rank with the vilest villains; he hid his diagnosis from everyone, even his devoted lover. So much for that pompous philosopher and philanderer! But even in the blighted world of AIDS, there were many heroes. These include the French scientists who discovered the HIV virus and, Gallo excepted, the American ones, who followed up all the early clues that eventually led to the discovery of the medications that can now tackle the illness. Many of these American heroes, Shilts shows, were penalized rather than praised by their universities for performing their singular services to mankind. The bathhouse chain owners, who were more interested in profiting from the unbridled orgies that gave them their profits than in stemming AIDS, were not the only amplifiers during the crucial early years. The blood banks, by refusing to screen blood, also contributed to the death of thousands of Americans. The Reagan administration's preoccupation with Central America and the Soviet Union was also a godsend to the virus. And, as the band played on, AIDS wormed its way through America's marginalized communities of hookers, hemophiliacs, heroin addicts, and Haitians. Gay activists, who tried to sound the alarm bells, were dismissed as sexual Nazis and theocrats by their confreres who wanted to party on in Castro Street's backroom bars and bathhouses, even though, as Shilts constantly reminds us, it meant almost certain death. Shilts has sent us a powerful message that we ignore at our peril. AIDS means that hedonists can expect to die sooner rather than later. The world's legions of drug shooting hookers will remain major amplifiers for AIDS, hepatitis and related illnesses as long as their addiction continues. So too will other marginalized and uneducated people. So too, of course, will people like Robert Gallo, who put his own narrow agenda ahead of humanity's. On the positive side, the book shows us that the villains are vastly outnumbered by the heroes, not the least of whom is Randy Shilts, who also finally succumbed to this great human calamity. Written on August 8, 2005 Summary: Epic, definitive history of AIDS epidemic This is an outstanding piece of journalism that will go down as the definitve history of the beginnings of the AIDS epidemic. It is not only an important historical record but an exciting read- a high brow detective story filled with intrigue, suspense and memorable characters and situations. Read this as if you were reading a very interesting, easily read textbook, because that is essentially what it is. It will be required reading for a wide variety of college courses (if not already). What is especially poignant about reading the book now is the somber knowledge that its author later died of the disease himself. What an amazing legacy! How many authors have written the definitive history of the disease which killed them? Written on April 20, 2005 Summary: READ THIS BOOK I was born in 1988, and so I have never known a world where AIDS did not exist, or was not a prominent part of American and global culture. This book was an incredibly written eye-opener. Shilts does an admirable job of digging through the complex bureaucracy and agendas that allowed AIDS to the become the monstrous epidemic it is today. The book doesn't attack any one party. It effectively shows how disinterested doctors, apathetic government, self-righteous members of the gay community, politicians, the media, and good ol' fashioned discrimination came together and unleashed a plague on the world. This book is every bit as powerful and relevant as it was when it was written. Get it, read it, learn from it. Written on April 19, 2005 Summary: The government just didn't care... Born in 1973, I came of age during the "AIDS scare" of the 80's. I remember avoiding drinking fountains, fearing someone's spit may be on the faucet. Me and all of my friends developed homophobia to the extreme, believing a homosexual's presence could somehow infect us with AIDS. If you think I was some kind of nut back then, you really don't understand what it was like to hit puberty during a time that one of the deadliest, scariest plagues in human history was just beginning to spread. All anybody knew was what the news told us, which wasn't much. We took bits and pieces of available information and formed our own judgements. The AIDS scare shaped all of my peer's sex lives as we reached high-school and beyond. This book presents all angles of the epidemic: From gays to junkies to doctors to politicians. You see how the gay community faced the threat, which is to say it DIDN'T face the threat until it was too late. Gay Politics of the day and fear of further gay-bashing led to a "wait and see" attitude...something which has in retrospect cost countless lives. Even when drug users and heterosexual people began to develop the bizarre symptoms of AIDS, American medical agencies refused to accept it. They said that the people were gay...PERIOD! What this book does so magnificently, is explain EXACTLY what was NOT being told to the public. It is one of the most moving pieces of investigative journalism you will ever read. To see how governments and their medical agencies took such a blase attitude when confronting this disaster is enough to make you tear the book apart as you read it. I highly recommend you read this book in conjuction with Ed Hooper's book, The River, which chronicles the origins of the AIDS pandemic. |
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| Catalog | Book | Book | Book | Book | Book |
| Release date | 2000-04-09 | 1998-05-22 | 1995-10-01 | 2008-10-14 | 2004-08-31 |
| Media | Paperback | Paperback | Paperback | Paperback | Paperback |
| Format | - | Illustrated | - | - | - |
| Number of pages | 656 | 272 | 768 | 400 | 336 |
| Ean | 9780312241353 | 9780684844251 | 9780140250916 | 9780312560850 | 9780812973013 |
| Book Isbn | 0312241356 | 0684844257 | 0140250913 | 0312560850 | 0812973011 |
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