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drksidegreen 's review for:
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
by Randy Shilts
The beginning of the book is thrilling - jumping between different locations as people start to develop unusual signs and symptoms, and people are trying to figure out what is going on. It reads like a remarkable medical mystery unfolding. Through the middle of the book, I find it gets a bit bogged down in the nitty-gritty politics of many groups (blood banks, public health departments, etc.), and it seems like the same events are repeating at times... it drags a bit in my opinion, which is why I drop the rating to 3 stars. Overall however, while I wish the second 2/3 were a bit more concise, the facts themselves are fascinating.
This is a bone chilling read - it lays out with extreme detail how at every level, over years, American society failed to respond to a horrifying epidemic as it was taking the lives of hundreds of young people. My feeling after reading this book is just sorrow for the missed opportunity - so many lives could have been saved if the American government had put money and leadership into controlling this epidemic before it got out of hand.
What's so disheartening however, is how little I feel we've learned. There are a frightening number of parallels that can be recognized reading through this book to how we've responded to the COVID19 pandemic. Moreover, it still seems (to me at least) that the AIDS epidemic is still not widely acknowledged for the horror that it was/is. After reading this book, I can't believe that Reagan's failure to respond meaningfully to control this epidemic in the early stages is not thought of as a defining failure of his presidency.
This is a bone chilling read - it lays out with extreme detail how at every level, over years, American society failed to respond to a horrifying epidemic as it was taking the lives of hundreds of young people. My feeling after reading this book is just sorrow for the missed opportunity - so many lives could have been saved if the American government had put money and leadership into controlling this epidemic before it got out of hand.
What's so disheartening however, is how little I feel we've learned. There are a frightening number of parallels that can be recognized reading through this book to how we've responded to the COVID19 pandemic. Moreover, it still seems (to me at least) that the AIDS epidemic is still not widely acknowledged for the horror that it was/is. After reading this book, I can't believe that Reagan's failure to respond meaningfully to control this epidemic in the early stages is not thought of as a defining failure of his presidency.