Mention About Books And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
Title | : | And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic |
Author | : | Randy Shilts |
Book Format | : | Paperback |
Book Edition | : | First Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 656 pages |
Published | : | April 9th 2000 by Stonewall Inn Editions (first published November 1st 1987) |
Categories | : | Nonfiction. History. LGBT. Science. Politics. Health. Medicine |
Randy Shilts
Paperback | Pages: 656 pages Rating: 4.37 | 21892 Users | 1222 Reviews
Narrative In Pursuance Of Books And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
By the time Rock Hudson's death in 1985 alerted all America to the danger of the AIDS epidemic, the disease had spread across the nation, killing thousands of people and emerging as the greatest health crisis of the 20th century. America faced a troubling question: What happened? How was this epidemic allowed to spread so far before it was taken seriously? In answering these questions, Shilts weaves the disparate threads into a coherent story, pinning down every evasion and contradiction at the highest levels of the medical, political, and media establishments.
Shilts shows that the epidemic spread wildly because the federal government put budget ahead of the nation's welfare; health authorities placed political expediency before the public health; and scientists were often more concerned with international prestige than saving lives. Against this backdrop, Shilts tells the heroic stories of individuals in science and politics, public health and the gay community, who struggled to alert the nation to the enormity of the danger it faced. And the Band Played On is both a tribute to these heroic people and a stinging indictment of the institutions that failed the nation so badly.
Shilts shows that the epidemic spread wildly because the federal government put budget ahead of the nation's welfare; health authorities placed political expediency before the public health; and scientists were often more concerned with international prestige than saving lives. Against this backdrop, Shilts tells the heroic stories of individuals in science and politics, public health and the gay community, who struggled to alert the nation to the enormity of the danger it faced. And the Band Played On is both a tribute to these heroic people and a stinging indictment of the institutions that failed the nation so badly.
Present Books To And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
Original Title: | And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic |
ISBN: | 0312241356 (ISBN13: 9780312241353) |
Edition Language: | English |
Literary Awards: | Stonewall Book Award (1988), ASJA Outstanding Book Award (1988), California Book Award for Nonfiction (Silver) (1987), National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for General Nonfiction (1987) |
Rating About Books And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
Ratings: 4.37 From 21892 Users | 1222 ReviewsAppraise About Books And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
This is a great book to read in conjunction with Oshinsky's Bellevue, which details the history of medicine in general and includes a brief summary of the story told in this book. It was great to be able to get the full story here. Bellevue also touches on the ebola epidemic. I highly recommend reading David Quammen's Spillover. It was one of the most spectacular books I have had the pleasure to read.This book really reminded me of so many things about the aIDS epidemic that I had forgotten orThis book brought back the early 80s in hallucinatory detail. I remember when we first heard about Gay Cancer, and how hard it was to get any decent information. I remember when the world got wobbly and my friends were dying and it seemed like nobody cared. I was quite certain that, given my penchant for fey boys, I wouldn't be around to see the turn of the century. I vividly remember making up file folders for 1989 for my job and thinking that the ones for 1990 would be in someone else's
This book has just about everything I like in a non-fiction. It's got science, medicine, high stakes, historical significance, and modern relevance. Trying to figure out why it wasn't more compelling to me, I had to focus on the 6th word in the title: Politics.This novel is about AIDS, but it's much more about people than about science. Shilts has a huge cast of characters, from French researchers to gay activists to scientists with the NIH and CDC. He tracks the disease from Fire Island
Tremendously thorough, very engaging, heartbreaking and furious. This was, sadly, a perfect book to read given the recent administration's demonstrated negligence and ineffectiveness in dealing with large-scale crises. Especially crises that are most devastating to vulnerable communities (i.e., everyone not white, cis, straight, Christian, male).
And the Band Played On is as important a tool in the teaching of American history as Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Jungle, The Grapes of Wrath, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. When crafting the required reading for students of American history, And the Band Played On needs to be added to that list.For many of us, this epidemic started in our lifetime. We remember first hearing about it on the news, but not really knowing what it was about. We remember the misinformation and differing accounts of
A friend of mine loaned me this book in the late eighties, and it cut through the illogical and gimmicky rhetoric I was hearing about HIV/AIDS in my late teens. It is a book that emphasizes the need to take care of the sick and explains how our vanities and prejudices can prevent us for doing that. Several years ago I saw this book laying amongst a pile of discarded books in the dusty hallway of a college. A note had been posted above the pile which read "Please take." This book is too
I didn't finish this. Reads like bad journalism. The story is, of course, tragic, but the various accounts ring false like the stories that actors tell. For example, we find: "On a hunch, Gottlieb twisted some arms to convince pathologists to take a small scraping of the patient's lung tissue through a nonsurgical maneuver." OK, so the author isn't a doctor, but 1. pathologists don't do endobronchial biopsies, pulmonologists do, 2.nobody has to twist a pulmonologists arm to do an endobronchial
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