Reviews

I was born in 1981, the same year an article about a new "gay cancer" was published, signaling the start of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. By the time I was old enough to really understand what AIDS was, the YM magazines I read were already full of articles about pretty blonde girls living with the disease, detailed info about condom use, and the oft-repeated reminder that, "anyone can get AIDS." It wasn't until later that I realized that AIDS originated in the gay community, and it wasn't until MUCH later that I understood exactly how much it decimated that community during the '80s and '90s, and how much discrimination early AIDS patients faced.

This book brings into stark relief the hardships endured by those touched by AIDS during the disease's first decade. France refers to AIDS as a plague, and while that might seem a bit melodramatic at first, after several hundred pages of deaths and suffering, that wording becomes undeniable. France humanizes the crisis by including both his own experiences as a gay man living in New York during the height of the epidemic, and those of the scientists, activists, politicians, and journalists working on AIDS, whose personalities are clearly shown, warts and all.

While the coverage of the New York activist/scientific scene can only be described as exhaustive, France goes into much less detail when talking about other AIDS hot spots like San Francisco and Africa. The last half of the the book started to get a bit bogged down by the huge cast of chemicals and characters, and by France's verbatim transcripts of ACT UP meetings and the petty squabbles between rival groups, but I suppose there's no way to avoid that.

Good choice for fans of science writing and GLBTQ history.

readingseal's review against another edition

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hopeful informative sad medium-paced

5.0

jackiez19's review against another edition

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informative inspiring slow-paced

The biggest thing that I got out of this book was how incredibly hard the gay community fought in the 1980s to be considered a priority by the medical establishment. This was a really wonderful deep dive into this movement. For anyone wanting to read it, don't be intimidated by the page length! A lot of the numbered pages are part of a detailed notes section at the end, which I think is optional. I didn't read the notes, anyways.

queerofthedagger's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative sad slow-paced

5.0

This somehow combines the stark history and a personal memoir of the AIDS epidemic, and it's exactly as important, harrowing, and needed as that sounds. While it is very US, and within that New York-centred, I think especially for my younger generation of queer people this is a highly, highly needed read. That aside, the one thing really sitting not well with me were the repeated Holocaust comparisons, even though I realize that it was a commonly used figure. Still, such a personal, not-sparing-anything documentation of the fight against AIDS, and how much we only had, and only have, ourselves to thank for everything that has been accomplished.

curiouscat17's review against another edition

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hopeful informative inspiring slow-paced

4.5

somestuff's review against another edition

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5.0

a very strong overview of treatment activism during the pre-treatment era of HIV/AIDS.
Has some deep rabbit holes into certain players and possible treatments that um in my opinion could have been replaced with deeper info on some of their other aspects of the pandemic only brushed upon. With this I’m talking about over coverage of AL-721 bootlegging, the Native’s coverage of the epidemic (Especially Chuck Ortleb’s conspiracy theories getting some serious airtime, as well as the deep and continuous info on Joseph Sonnabend. And a very deep biography of Larry Kramer’s and Michael Callen’s artistic outputs?
And by things left out I mean the ashes actions, true explanations of funding campaigns for ACTUP/NY, and funding structured within NIH/NIAID and what restructuring actually occurred after the Clinton administration “shook things up”.
Some of the early years does feel like a near copy of and the band played on with only slightly less focus on patient O/ Gaetan Dugas.

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