By the time Rock Hudson’s death in alerted all America to the danger of the AIDS epidemic, the disease had spread across the nation, killing thousands of. “Shilts successfully weaves comprehensive investigative reporting and commercial page-turning pacing, political intrigue, and personal tragedy into a landmark. And the Band Played on: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic [Randy Shilts] on *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers.
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As the book progresses in its mesmerizing, chronological style, jumping from anf to place, alternating personal stories with political and medical intrigue, the moments of frustration and disbelief grow. However, far more importantly it speaks from a human perspective – which frankly transcends ideology and as I write this in seems far too absent from our discussion of costs and deficits and other such fictions.
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1987. Book: And the Band Played On
Shiltz focused almost primarily upon the political aspects. But Schiltz left some crucial things out.
Activists put pressure on the San Francisco Public Health director to educate people about how AIDS is transmitted, and demanded he close bathhouses as a matter of public health. Obviously, the reason I covered AIDS from the start was that, to me, it was never something that happened to those other people.
I vividly remember making up file folders for for my job and thinking that the ones for would be in someone else’s handwriting. I bawled my eyes out when I bannd the extent of my ignorance of my black brothers and sisters and feeling utterly ashamed that I did not know more about bsnd civil rights movement.
People with aids have a Deficient immune system and therefor they contract many painful and horrible diseases that people with an intact immune system do not get. Sep 13, Hadrian rated it it was amazing Shelves: But there are two chief reasons that remain at the forefront: Everett Koop to provide a report on the epidemic.
Health care practitioners, politicians, bureaucrats, epidemiologists, one famous Hollywood actor and a close-knit group of guys from Fire Island who watched friend after friend after friend succomb to AIDS and then went on to found the Gay Men’s Health Crisis.
The attitude of all parts of our society to gay people was and still is controversial and delicate, while there were exceptions, most referred to them as following: An impressively researched and richly detailed narrative. It could happen again.
Book: And the Band Played On – Gay in the 80s
In Octoberseven people died after ingesting cyanide -laced Tylenol capsules. This book has just about everything I like in a non-fiction. I actually think this book should be required reading at college level for any political science class that is examining the flaws of what our system can become. It’s a brilliant book about a heartbreaking time. First of all, he could assume that nobody there would be gay and, if they were gay, they wouldn’t talk about it and that nobody would take offense at that.
Oct 31, Paul Bryant rated it really liked it Shelves: Was it about the disease itself? To ask other readers questions about And the Band Played Onplease sign up. I also think that no matter what the conflict, a lot of people, politicians especially, will think of power first and human lives second.
The left wing political movements were are less opposed to the gay movement, but do not want to be associated with it politically, as this may harm their chances of being elected.
Reading about it made me furious; I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like to be in the life then, watching it unfold in real time. But this book showed me that I don’t know as much as I thought I knew. At first, I marveled at the low numbers of infections and the novelty of this.
If you’re seeking a comprehensive history of the Hte epidemic, look no further. It highlights the stories of different people who died of AIDS as well as the doctors, researchers, and politicians working to combat the epidemic. 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.
The story is, silts course, tragic, but the various accounts ring false like the stories that actors tell. How could so many people have done nothing or palyed about it for so long?
And The Band Played on: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic – Randy Shilts – Google Books
All I remember is one man telling me, ” when I came here tonight I thought that Freddie Mercury deserved to die, when I left, I recognize he engaged in reckless behavior which led to his death, but that his death was not a punishment for his behavior. I didn’t know much about what it had been like when AIDS first broke out.
Then, they turned and walked out, leaving the gaunt man on the floor. And the politicians who could have created hospices, units in hospitals, and information programs, did nothing. He was the author of The Mayor of Castro Street: The worldwide AIDS epidemic is such an important part of American history and as I read each page it felt unnerving to know that it continues today, and on such an epic scale. 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.
Shilts interweaves the tales of politics with those of people, the people suffering and dying from AIDS. Archived from the original syilts 21 February Shilts praised the Public Health Department of San Francisco’s handling of the new communicable disease as they tracked down people who were sick and linked them to other people who had symptoms, although some of them were living in different parts of the country.
And the Band Played on: Gay activists considered calls for safe sex to be homophobic slurs, scientists were uncooperative and only interested in earning bsnd Nobel Prize, and blood banks were only concerned with the bottom line, refusing to admit that their supplies were contaminated. The owners of these institutions, who got very rich, used every political and legal method they could find to prevent restrictions of activity in their institutions, even when they specifically knew that it was spreading a lethal disease.
Sep 25, Shitls Gallagher rated it it was amazing Shelves: Jan 06, Melody rated it it was amazing Shelves: This book had been sitting on my shelves for years before I finally read it.
I don’t think it’s possible to read this and not feel, in some way, scarred by the failures Shilts points out, and how those resonate with the broader failures that our country has witnessed in the subsequent 27 years since this was first plajed.
And some people myself includedwhen we read those sections, we glossed over them. But for the wider population — particularly in the USA — there suilts generally ignorance, not helped by the jaw-dropping intransigence of politicians.
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
Author of ‘And the Band Played On’ is credited with awakening nation to the health crisis. 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. As the book progresses in bannd mesmerizing, chronological style, jumping from place to place, alternating perso This is a life-changing book.