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4.49 AVERAGE
4.49 AVERAGE
My sister's favorite book - a self-proclaimed 'textbook' - took me awhile to get through. But it was worth the effort. A thoroughly researched account of the AIDS epidemic that I read during the height of the Covid pandemic starred some of the same key players. Enlightening and devastating, it opened my eyes to the key social and political factors that played a role in exacerbating what was already a deadly disease.
A true classic of AIDS/HIV literature. In the 2020s, this book has transitioned to a period piece. Shilts, a gay man and journalist active in SF during the height of the HIV epidemic, writes with a palpable anger. In particular, he dedicates numerous pages to despising Gaetan Dugas, the HIV+ flight attendant with hundreds of sexual partners. Genetic studies on mutations of the HIV virus that were published after Shilts himself had passed away from HIV related complications have vindicated Dugas from Shilts' accusation of being patient zero. Dugas, like Shilts, was the victim of a horrible disease and the cruelty of a world that refused to care for homosexuals like him.
But Shilts' anger, when interpreted with a grain of salt, carries value as a lens through which we can see the internal discourses of the gay community reckoning with a true existential threat, an earth-shaking rage against institutions that left them to die on the steps of Capitol Hill.
An absolute must read for any member of the LGBT community or medical professional interested in the HIV+ patient population. The first time I encountered a teenage patient who tested positive for HIV, I was moved thinking of all the people who died along the way to bring them Biktarvy.
But Shilts' anger, when interpreted with a grain of salt, carries value as a lens through which we can see the internal discourses of the gay community reckoning with a true existential threat, an earth-shaking rage against institutions that left them to die on the steps of Capitol Hill.
An absolute must read for any member of the LGBT community or medical professional interested in the HIV+ patient population. The first time I encountered a teenage patient who tested positive for HIV, I was moved thinking of all the people who died along the way to bring them Biktarvy.
Such an indictment of the Reagan administration, tons of relevance to our current climate, very well-written.
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Kindle
It is a little eerie to be reading this book about the incredibly bungled (lack of) response to the AIDS epidemic in the midst of the COVID19 epidemic. This is a doorstop of a book – 660 pages of how the politics of government, science, and personal sensitivities killed thousands upon thousands of young men.
I keep getting bogged down in the tedium and frustration of death count, wasted days long CDC meetings, and useless government figures, “didn’t I JUST read this 10 times in the last 200 pages?” But imagine how it felt to LIVE this for a DECADE.
I want to think we are better than this as a country and humans. And yet...
"...paradigms of how politics and public health could conspire to foster catastrophe." - p.306
It is a little eerie to be reading this book about the incredibly bungled (lack of) response to the AIDS epidemic in the midst of the COVID19 epidemic. This is a doorstop of a book – 660 pages of how the politics of government, science, and personal sensitivities killed thousands upon thousands of young men.
I keep getting bogged down in the tedium and frustration of death count, wasted days long CDC meetings, and useless government figures, “didn’t I JUST read this 10 times in the last 200 pages?” But imagine how it felt to LIVE this for a DECADE.
I want to think we are better than this as a country and humans. And yet...
"...paradigms of how politics and public health could conspire to foster catastrophe." - p.306
Did anyone else watch ‘It’s a Sin’? The Russell T Davies drama came out in lockdown, letting viewers fall in love with a group of young people in the 80s before tearing our hearts out with the brutal realities of the AIDS epidemic.
I added this book to my TBR straight after. I felt embarrassed how little I knew about AIDS, a disease I only really heard about as a kid in the context of soulless children’s jokes and poverty in Africa.
It was a real struggle to read this. It’s heavy both physically and emotionally. Shilts wrote this in 1987, barely out from the woods, and it’s hard to take it in that vein when there’s so much context after which I want to feed in. I feel this is the start of my understanding of this issue rather than the silver bullet.
I learnt a great deal within these pages. I despaired at the hindering of bureaucracy and politics which allowed more deaths than were necessary. I sobbed at the tales, peppered into the political history, of people who suffered with AIDS. These were told well, though they seemed so personal that I sometimes wondered how much was real and how much Shilts had added with artistic license.
There’s so much to reflect on that I can barely get it down in this review, and I’ll be thinking about this for a long time.
I’d definitely recommend to anyone seeking to understand this issue further, or anyone with an interesting in LGBT/ political history.
I added this book to my TBR straight after. I felt embarrassed how little I knew about AIDS, a disease I only really heard about as a kid in the context of soulless children’s jokes and poverty in Africa.
It was a real struggle to read this. It’s heavy both physically and emotionally. Shilts wrote this in 1987, barely out from the woods, and it’s hard to take it in that vein when there’s so much context after which I want to feed in. I feel this is the start of my understanding of this issue rather than the silver bullet.
I learnt a great deal within these pages. I despaired at the hindering of bureaucracy and politics which allowed more deaths than were necessary. I sobbed at the tales, peppered into the political history, of people who suffered with AIDS. These were told well, though they seemed so personal that I sometimes wondered how much was real and how much Shilts had added with artistic license.
There’s so much to reflect on that I can barely get it down in this review, and I’ll be thinking about this for a long time.
I’d definitely recommend to anyone seeking to understand this issue further, or anyone with an interesting in LGBT/ political history.
This is a fascinating book that reads like a thriller. The author went from one scene to the next and never stayed too long on any particular subject and tied everything together nicely. This book reminded me a lot of Common Ground (by J. Anthony Lukas) in its depth and scale. One significant contrast to me was Lukas seemed largely neutral whereas Shilts put a strong imprint on the various subject matters he wrote about, although he did so without overtly stating his opinions. Shilts took some very unpopular stands to see beyond the issues as they emerged and ultimately was a man of vision. (Shilts was an openly gay journalist in SF who was reviled by large groups in the gay community for, among other things, reporting on the sexual acts in the gay community and for advocating the closure of bathhouses as a means to curb the rapid spread of HIV.)
Shilts does not hide his contempt for the lethargic reaction of the media, internecine squabbles of the medical practitioners and researchers, members of the gay community who were more concerned with civil rights than with lobbying for government action and funding for research and education, AIDSspeak, infected individuals who wantonly sought more sexual partners, Ronald Regan, Margaret Heckler, and others. Shilts hammered Ed Koch for his non-action again and again which I somehow found very satisfying.
Shilts also strongly recognized the heroes of the early AIDS era.
I read the 20th anniversary edition of the book and was profoundly disappointed that it had absolutely no updates from the original book (which was published in 1987). Throughout the book Shilts lists the growing number of AIDS cases and related deaths, which grow into the thousands. Those figures seem quaint when compared to the millions who currently have AIDS and the millions who have died from AIDS. The signal moment when AIDS came into popular consciousness was the announcement in 1985 that Rock Hudson had AIDS. An equally significant moment was when Magic Johnson announced he had HIV in 1991. This fact is not mentioned nor is there any mention of current funding for research, the latest statistics, the latest treatments or the prospects for a vaccine. To mark the book as the 20th anniversary edition and to not provide an updated epilogue is absolutely shameful. It doesn't even mention that the author died of AIDS. One other (minor) quibble is the scarcity of notes on sources. The author lists his interview subjects and makes reference to FOIA requests but I was very interested to know more about his sources.
It was important for me to know Shilts was tested for HIV while working on this book and delayed notification until after the book was published so as not to influence his work. Shilts died of AIDS in 1994. I think he deserves a great deal of credit for trying to stir up interest and action when the media and government ignored the burgeoning AIDS epidemic. He died a hero and a visionist.
Shilts does not hide his contempt for the lethargic reaction of the media, internecine squabbles of the medical practitioners and researchers, members of the gay community who were more concerned with civil rights than with lobbying for government action and funding for research and education, AIDSspeak, infected individuals who wantonly sought more sexual partners, Ronald Regan, Margaret Heckler, and others. Shilts hammered Ed Koch for his non-action again and again which I somehow found very satisfying.
Shilts also strongly recognized the heroes of the early AIDS era.
I read the 20th anniversary edition of the book and was profoundly disappointed that it had absolutely no updates from the original book (which was published in 1987). Throughout the book Shilts lists the growing number of AIDS cases and related deaths, which grow into the thousands. Those figures seem quaint when compared to the millions who currently have AIDS and the millions who have died from AIDS. The signal moment when AIDS came into popular consciousness was the announcement in 1985 that Rock Hudson had AIDS. An equally significant moment was when Magic Johnson announced he had HIV in 1991. This fact is not mentioned nor is there any mention of current funding for research, the latest statistics, the latest treatments or the prospects for a vaccine. To mark the book as the 20th anniversary edition and to not provide an updated epilogue is absolutely shameful. It doesn't even mention that the author died of AIDS. One other (minor) quibble is the scarcity of notes on sources. The author lists his interview subjects and makes reference to FOIA requests but I was very interested to know more about his sources.
It was important for me to know Shilts was tested for HIV while working on this book and delayed notification until after the book was published so as not to influence his work. Shilts died of AIDS in 1994. I think he deserves a great deal of credit for trying to stir up interest and action when the media and government ignored the burgeoning AIDS epidemic. He died a hero and a visionist.
informative
I am cynical about write-ups about disasters--it's easy to say in hindsight that things weren't handled well in a bad situation, but it's much harder to say it when the situation is going on. I did not expect this to be a moving or shocking book for that reason, but it was absolutely phenomenal. This was most a tragedy that could have been greatly lessened had warnings been heeded at the time. I am not particularly interested in epidemiology and picked this up wanting to broaden my horizons--I expected to give up partway through, because 650 pages on a topic you're not interested in is not generally super-easy to read. But this was an extremely, extremely interesting work that read much more like a novel than a textbook. It is a long and very tragic read, but very worth the effort.
The first time I heard of AIDS was my sophomore year of high school in 1983 from a student (who later turned out to be gay). I actually was on the periphery of the LGBT community in College (at the time I thought I was just an ally). I knew people in NYC in the act-up movement trying to raise attention to AIDS and the plight of the gay community from some boisterous protesting. Anyway, I was with the exception of a couple of girlfriends celibate for most of the 1980s to the present. I dodged the AIDS bullet up to the present. Now as a trans woman open to T4T I am reentering the high-risk group.
I first read this book in the late 1990s many things have happened since the dark times of the early 1980s AZT and ACE inhibitors and PrEP there are many more safeguards than the early days of the virus. This disease struck down so many of my generation and I feel like a weird time traveler joining the LBGT community 30 years after the AIDS apocalypse. This story won't be over till there is a cure or vaccine I hope that day comes.
Update 4/20/2022 Very depressing story. If I had followed my proclivities back then I wouldn't be alive now. Many good people died for being themselves. Those of us hiding out in stasis were spared but we weren't the more noble for it.
I first read this book in the late 1990s many things have happened since the dark times of the early 1980s AZT and ACE inhibitors and PrEP there are many more safeguards than the early days of the virus. This disease struck down so many of my generation and I feel like a weird time traveler joining the LBGT community 30 years after the AIDS apocalypse. This story won't be over till there is a cure or vaccine I hope that day comes.
Update 4/20/2022 Very depressing story. If I had followed my proclivities back then I wouldn't be alive now. Many good people died for being themselves. Those of us hiding out in stasis were spared but we weren't the more noble for it.