Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

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

8 reviews

abelh's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

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

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, Death, Homophobia, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Drug use, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Alcoholism, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

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

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

friends2lovers's review against another edition

challenging informative sad medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

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

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

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

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

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

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

emmeline's review against another edition

personally, I didn't vibe with the writing style. that combined with the size of the book and the small font size made this difficult for me to actually pick up and want to finish. I feel like a learned a lot from what I did read, specifically from the medical perspective and how doctors and researchers reacted. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Terminal illness, and Medical content

Moderate: Drug use, Homophobia, Sexual content, and Grief