A Classic | And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 20th-Anniversary Edition |...

Amazing! | And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 20th-Anniversary Edition | Randy Shilts

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	• And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 20th-Anniversary Edition Randy Shilts St. Martin's Griffin, 2007 - 656 pages average customer review:based on 68 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

How the fight against AIDS was initially lost....

Even though I've been fortunate to never have had AIDS touch my life, this book still brought home a powerhouse of feelings - shame at seeing how poorly so many of our fellow human beings were treated, anger at the way their suffering was treated as insignificant, grief at how many people have been lost to such an insidious disease and outrage at the way our government - and governmental health agencies - were willing to play politics when peoples lives were at stake.

Randy Shilts creates a moving, troubling narrative that gives "And the Band Played On" more of the feeling of a novel than of a report or documentation of a study. You get to know the people he writes about enough to care about them - and about what happens to them.

In more recent years, there have been some questions raised about his identification of Gaeton Dugas as "Patient Zero," with current thinking that it took a number of different people to bring AIDS to the western world and begin spreading here. Obviously, this is a point that will likely never be entirely resolved, but even if you disagree with Shilts theory, the rest of the book is still very informative and well worth reading.

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A Classic

I have just gone back and re-read this book for the second time. I was very aware of the beginnings of the HIV/AIDS crisis around the time they began calling it the Gay disease when the first newspaper articles were written. I am a straight public health nurse beginning to work on teen suicide at that time but it was clear from the beginning that this disease was terrible and that politicians were cowardly in facing this crisis from the very beginning. I keep this book on my treasured book shelf so I will never forget how bad things can get in this country. Lately, though, you don't need a book to remind you!

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Amazing!

a must read. you will not be able to put it down. It is constantly unfolding before you. It will make you stop for moments of reflection while you ponder how we could have all been so stupid. PLEASE READ!

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Review of And The Band Played On

I've just received it and only just started reading it. So far I agree with all the other reviewers that this is an extraordinary and landmark piece of investigative journalism. Looking back, in 2007, on the history of the epidemic it very moving to see the earliest medical struggles to identify the disease, the bizarre historical melding of the triumph of conservatism in politics and the emergence of the 'gay disease' in the early 1980s. Given the subsequent explosion of the disease in the developing world way beyond the confines of the NY and San Francisco urban gay scenes, it is humbling and horrifying to revisit the first awakening of humanity to the enormity of the pandemic. You don't even have to be much interested in the illness or the gay liberation movement to be astounded by the story.

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And the Band Played On

I have watched this DVD more times than I can count. Now am reading the book, makes you really think about. What else have we been persuaded to look the other way about? There seems to be an awful lot of cover ups that go on in our government, CDC and the drug industry.

E Teal

Upon it's first publication twenty years ago, And The Band Played on was quickly recognized as a masterpiece of investigatve reporting. An international bestseller, a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and made into a critically acclaimed movie, Shilts' expose revealed why AIDS was allowed to spread unchecked during the early 80's while the most trusted institutions ignored or denied the threat. One of the few true modern classics, it changed and framed how AIDS was discussed in the following years. Now republished in a special 20th Anniversary edition, And the Band Played On remains one of the essential books of our time.

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