Take a photo of a barcode or cover
luckyinseattle 's review for:
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
by Randy Shilts
This was well written. It reads like a mystery novel as the disease starts to appear in pockets of the country and physicians rush to connect the dots between the patients. The majority of this book is a steady paced, downward spiral of maddening, frustrating and disappointing politics, ignorance, denial, grandstanding by scientists, greed of shop owners and science, shameful actions of hospitals and blood blanks, and a community of men so anxious and desperate to protect their independence and gains (since Harvey Milk) that they unfortunately sacrificed many of their own.
The amount of detail, interviews, memos, dates, disease data and the ever present disease and death total are impressive. The one area I struggled reading this 600 page book is trying to keep track of the large list of characters, mostly male. After awhile I gave up flipping back to remember who was who.
A must read for the gay community, a "should read" for those into epidemiology. Infectious disease is fascinating but scary. Hopefully when the next big epidemic arrives communications and politics will produce a different outcome.
The amount of detail, interviews, memos, dates, disease data and the ever present disease and death total are impressive. The one area I struggled reading this 600 page book is trying to keep track of the large list of characters, mostly male. After awhile I gave up flipping back to remember who was who.
A must read for the gay community, a "should read" for those into epidemiology. Infectious disease is fascinating but scary. Hopefully when the next big epidemic arrives communications and politics will produce a different outcome.