The Gravest Show on Earth: America in the Age of AIDS [Hardcover]

Elinor Burkett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 23, 1995

Not since And the Band Played On has any journalist taken readers behind the scenes in the war against AIDS to reveal how avarice, ignorance, and egotism are subverting the nation's struggle against the epidemic. Elinor Burkett goes beyond Randy Shilts, reporting on aspects of the plague he did not cover and finding answers to the deeper questions of what AIDS reveals about America on the brink of the millennium. Readers meet the major players - from activist and playwright Larry Kramer to scientist Robert Gallo and MTV star Pedro Zamora - at home, in their laboratories, and at demonstrations. Here are Jonas Salk, world renowned medical researcher, whose carefully timed announcements about his vaccine research have made him the darling of Wall Street; Henry Heimlich, peddling malaria as the magic bullet that will kill HIV; and federally funded scientists who make advertorials for the very drug companies whose products they test. Burkett goes into the street for a political funeral and

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A few pages into this acerbic, compelling and morally acute examination of American responses to the AIDS crisis, Burkett deftly plays raucous gay activist Larry Kramer off against researcher Robert Gallo; their careers, she demonstrates, dramatize the triumph of self-interest over altruism. A journalist formerly working the "AIDS beat" at the Miami Herald, Burkett (A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse, and the Catholic Church) contends that this triumph typifies any number of participants in "AIDS Inc." The most devastating health crisis of our age prompted pharmaceutical firms?and the doctors and researchers who worked as their consultants?to practice "bedside robbery": charging inflated prices for drugs that have done little to impede and sometimes (as in the case of AZT) have even accelerated the decline in the health of people with AIDS. Sustained examination of the growing suspicion that HIV is not the sole cause of AIDS has been impeded by members of the scientific community who profit from insisting that in fact it is. Burkett does not spare members of the gay community; her chapter "Strike a Pose," aside from an admiring portrait of activist Peter Staley, witheringly characterizes ACT UP's demonstrations as ineffectual theatrics. And the gay community's well-intentioned attempts to address the incidence of AIDS among the black community, she maintains, have been thwarted by ignorance and hostility on both sides. Burkett's take on such familiar topics is bracing and articulate. The book also gives valuable attention to the unfair maligning of the Clinton administration's actions in the fight against the epidemic; to the late Pedro Zamora's ambivalence about becoming MTV's poster boy for people with AIDS; and to the alarming reluctance of the medical community to properly treat and study women infected with HIV. 50,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Writing that "AIDS is the most politically controversial epidemic in human history," Burkett, a reporter for the Miami Herald from 1988 to 1992, delivers what might be considered a sequel to Randy Shilts's And the Band Played On (LJ 11/15/87) as she continues the story into the mid-1990s. Viewing AIDS as less a disease than an industry, Burkett critiques the roles of scientists, physicians, politicians, gay activists, fundamentalists, pharmaceutical companies, and media figures as they jump on the AIDS bandwagon for personal and political advancement. Deftly capturing the characteristics of such players as Larry Kramer, Robert Gallo, Kimberly Bergalis, Pedro Zamora, ACT UP, and the Center for Disease Control and examining complex issues like the incidence of AIDS among African Americans, women, and the heterosexual population in general, Burkett rips through the rhetoric to the reality?political, scientific, and social?to offer an engaging analysis of AIDS in America. For all collections.
-?James E. Van Buskirk, San Francisco P.L.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 399 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; 1 edition (October 23, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395745373
• ISBN-13: 978-0395745373
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,991,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Gravest Show on Earth, July 9, 2005

By 

Sergei Kap "S." (Ca, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Gravest Show on Earth: America in the Age of AIDS (Paperback)

The Gravest Show on earth is in a long line of books denouncing the AIDS/HIV connection, if read in that way. It is highly entertaining, informative, stylish, and unfortunately very necessary Ten Years after being published.

Interesting that no one has yet reviewed this book, which goes to say that, again unfortunately, hardly anyone still knows.

Read it for the laughter, read it for the cheer.

Judgment day commeth, and although it might not commeth right soon, when and if it does...The earth will shake, not only for ROBERT GALLO and Co., but for every iota of American hubris that abounds.

This is a masterwork of investigative journalism.