Reviews tagging 'Death'

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts

15 reviews

abelh's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Medical trauma, Ableism, Suicide attempt, Sexual violence, Medical content, Racism, Pandemic/Epidemic, Grief, Eating disorder, Alcohol, Toxic relationship, Suicide, Alcoholism, Terminal illness, Suicidal thoughts, Self harm, Emotional abuse, Sexual harassment, Hate crime, Forced institutionalization, Addiction, Physical abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Drug use, Drug abuse, Domestic abuse, Cursing, Classism, Misogyny, Outing, Transphobia, Sexism, Religious bigotry, Police brutality, Lesbophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual assault, and Homophobia

b3thanamy's review

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Terminal illness

znvisser's review against another edition

informative sad slow-paced

4.75

 This has been on my to-read for a while and oof, I am impressed. This is such an amazing work of investigative journalism, especially considering how close to all events this has been written. Shilts manages to incorporate many causes, perspectives and subcultures that collided into this big mess of handling this horrible epidemic: politics, capitalism, academia and its publishing, healthcare and its funding, (fear of) homophobia, media functioning… the unfolding of this epidemic is such a heartbreaking piece of history and this story outlines in much detail how it all went so terribly wrong, including many key characters and organizations. Even with the subject matter aside however, it isn’t an easy read: it’s long and slow paced due to the many events covered, and during the audio I sometimes had trouble keeping all organisations and individuals apart; but it’s a journey that provides many impactful insights nonetheless. Every organisation, sector and government  should keep learning their lessons from this so nothing like this can ever happen again. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Pandemic/Epidemic, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Classism, Death, and Homophobia

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Animal cruelty, and Drug use

Minor: Pregnancy, Alcoholism, and Death of parent

kaiciemesser's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness

Moderate: Death

v_neptune's review against another edition

got what i needed for the assignment and bowed out. good book though

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Terminal illness, Homophobia, Medical content, Death, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Cancer, Drug use, Addiction, Sexual content, and Drug abuse

paulwesterberg's review against another edition

emotional funny informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

holy fucking shit this book has changed me straight down to my molecular makeup. i wish i could say more but truly i cannot express it in words. i’m gonna be thinking about this book for the rest of my life. my god

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

friends2lovers's review

challenging informative sad medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Terminal illness, Medical content, Pandemic/Epidemic, Grief, Cancer, and Death

Moderate: Drug abuse, Drug use, Medical trauma, Religious bigotry, and Sexual content

Minor: Child death and Suicidal thoughts

pmhandley's review against another edition

dark informative sad medium-paced

4.0

Reading this book in the time of COVID is unsurprisingly prescient. So much rings familiar. The unpreparedness, the underreported case counts, the general selfishness where people refuse to change their behavior while the government bungles messaging on public health. This is also one of the few books I've read of this length that actually needed to be this long. It does a great job of portraying its subjects as complicated humans and as people largely doing the best they could without the clarity that comes with hindsight. As bad as I already thought the Reagan administration was around AIDS, somehow, it was even worse. While frustrating to watch people push back on testing and and closing the bathhouses, it's easy to see why an administration so steeped in the Christian right and homophobia was not to be trusted and why even effective public health measures would be suspect. It's sad to think how many lives could have been saved if rampant homophobia had not existed at the time, or stigma around intravenous drug users and sex work. Things like closing bathhouses and starting HIV testing campaigns would have been less controversial. I was also unaware how much stupid scientific infighting had existed and how much it held up research. People were dying and transfusion AIDS was being dismissed as a possibility while countries fought over whose scientists got to claim discovery and the French scientists ultimately got shorted. Admittedly I did cringe a little at some of the dated language. The general tone in which "Africa" is spoken about is ignorant sounding. "Prostitute" is used widely since "sex worker" was obviously not in wide usage in 1987. Generally, the book is is very Western-centered, which makes sense given the time and what information was available.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Terminal illness

Moderate: Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Religious bigotry, and Homophobia

Minor: Hate crime, Alcoholism, Medical content, Drug use, Outing, and Cancer

usually_sleep_deprived's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Addiction, Gaslighting, Chronic illness, Drug use, Forced institutionalization, Hate crime, Medical content, Terminal illness, Torture, Bullying, Confinement, Death, Police brutality, Racism, Sexism, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Ableism, Abandonment, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Classism, Cursing, Lesbophobia, Medical trauma, Outing, Physical abuse, Self harm, Violence, Homophobia, Religious bigotry, Toxic friendship, and Toxic relationship

sakisreads's review against another edition

challenging dark sad slow-paced

3.0

A hard hitting, harrowing read. This is probably the book that took me the longest to read this year, as there are so many names and perspectives to contend with. It was astonishing that the administration and media didn’t cover the AIDS epidemic from the get go, and Shilts doesn’t hold back on his criticism of that. However, his portrayal of Gaetan Dugas (dubbed ‘Patient Zero’) felt aggressive and it felt unfair that Dugas could not say anything back, as he passed away in 1984.
Overall, this was a good but quite dated look into the AIDS epidemic. I think I would like to find a more sensitive perspective into this topic 😳

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Medical trauma, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Transphobia, Homophobia, Alcoholism, Biphobia, Bullying, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Grief, and Terminal illness