And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (Paperback)

~ (Author), William Greider (Introduction) "Tall sails scraped the deep purple night as rockets burst, flared, and flourished red, white, and blue over the stoic Statue of Liberty..." (more)
Key Phrases: core antibody testing, retrovirus lab, other gay leaders, San Francisco, New York, Bill Kraus (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the first major book on AIDS, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Randy Shilts examines the making of an epidemic. Shilts researched and reported the book exhaustively, chronicling almost day-by-day the first five years of AIDS. His work is critical of the medical and scientific communities' initial response and particularly harsh on the Reagan Administration, who he claims cut funding, ignored calls for action and deliberately misled Congress. Shilts doesn't stop there, wondering why more people in the gay community, the mass media and the country at large didn't stand up in anger more quickly. The AIDS pandemic is one of the most striking developments of the late 20th century and this is the definitive story of its beginnings. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

"An exhaustive account of the early years of the AIDS crisis, this outlines the medical, social and political forces behind the epidemic's origin and rapid spread," reported PW . "The book stands as a definitive reminder of the shameful injustice inflicted on this nation by the institutions in which we put our trust . . . a landmark work." 200,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 656 pages
• Publisher: Stonewall Inn Editions; 1st edition (April 9, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312241356
• ISBN-13: 978-0312241353
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #228,955 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "A horribly cruel and insidious virus", April 30, 2002

By	JLind555 - See all my reviews

Randy Shilts masterpiece, "And The Band Played On", reads like a detective story; from the discovery of an unusual new organism that was killing a few people slowly and inexorably in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and multiplied exponentially underground until it exploded into the number one health catastrophe on the planet. The fact that AIDS at first took its heaviest toll among gay men, and then among intravenous drug users, guaranteed that its early victims would become outcasts. The AIDS panic seems unbelievable in retrospect but was all too real in the 80s; people were forced off their jobs, children were barred from schools, and anyone who belonged to the "4-H club" (homosexuals, hard-drug users, hemophiliacs, and -- incredibly -- Haitians)were treated like pariahs. The secrecy and denial in dealing with the crisis helped it to spread unabated. Shilts pulls no punches in writing this book. He is equally angry at the Reagan administration which preached pious platitudes while withholding desperately needed funds for medical research; the radical gay community which refused to acknowledge its own responsibility for the sexually promiscuous behavior that helped spread the disease like wildfire, and those in the medical community who played grandstanding politics and plain old-fashioned spite while patients were dying all around them. And then of course there was the media, which treated this puzzling, terrifying new disease, which for two years after its discovery didn't even have a name, as something the "general public" didn't have to be concerned about -- until heterosexual men and women began to be infected. But there were also the heroes -- the physicians who devoted their days and nights to treating their patients, gay men like Larry Kramer who refused to let the gay community sweep the problem under the rug, Rock Hudson, whose up-front candor and admission of his illness shocked the American public and helped to bring AIDS out of the closet once and for all, and C. Everett Koop, Reagan's Surgeon General, who refused to play politics and demonstrated the leadership his boss lacked in his common-sense and compassionate approach to meeting the crisis, to the horror of his right-wing constituency. Shilts wrote his story with such compelling urgency that it wraps the reader up like a whodunit you don't want to put down. One shares his disgust at the doctors who cared more about their own self-promotion than about their patients; the right-wing politicians who treated the victims of a devastating and deadly disease as if they were sinners who had earned the wrath of God; the gay men who didn't care how many people they infected as long as they could enjoy the promiscuous atmosphere of the bath houses, and most incredibly, the for-profit blood banks, which refused to admit their product was carrying a deadly virus and fought against blood testing for three years while the number of people who died from transfusions of infected blood grew by the thousands. And in a heartbreaking coda to this story, Shilts deliberately put off having his own blood tested while he was writing this book because he didn't want his judgement biased if he turned out to be HIV positive. It was only after he finished the book that he learned that he was infected with the virus that had killed so many and in a few years would also kill him. Shilts' death from AIDS was a tragedy, but he left us this magnificent book as his legacy. After reading his book, we are the richer and the wiser for his information, his insight and his understanding.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An outstanding work of journalism, April 27, 2004

By	Trixie "cupcakejones" (Ohio) - See all my reviews

I'm sure most people are familiar with the story but just as very brief background Randy Shilts was a reporter at the epicenter of the AIDS crisis when it first began. When his paper assigned him to cover the story on a regular basis (the only paper in the country to do so), he gained access to an vast wealth of material and a unique perspective-one that for many years went largely unreported by most of the media until the death of Rock Hudson changed everything. Shilts discovered he himself was HIV positive after he finished the book; he had asked his doctor not to reveal the test results to him until then. He passed way in 1994. His work to alert his own community on the coming health crisis often made him a pariah within it.

This is an amazing history of how the virus took off in America and an insight into why it remained so under-reported for so long. The story involves some very brave patients, some very irresponsible ones, incredibly dedicated medical professionals, major bungling by our government and the blood industry-some of it intentional and some paths paved with good intentions, and the mixed, frustrating reaction of the gay community itself. Shilts doesn't write completely without bias-he calls the decision of the CDC to release patient names to an NYC bloodbank "incredibly stupid" but who wouldn't agree with him on that point? Also, Shilt's fury at certain members of the Reagan administration and Reagan himself is palpable. Once again though, who wouldn't agree with him once the story has been unfolded. His anger is not limited just to the government nor is this just an anti-Republican screed-he praises Orrin Hatch and Everett Koop while bitterly recalling the inaction of Ed Koch's administration in New York. Gay leaders also are not always portrayed in a flattering light. For all of that though, Shilts struggles to be fair and largely is successful.

This book may look daunting, both because of it's subject matter and it's length (clocking in around 600 pages.) However it is incredibly worth your time and written so well that you'll make surprisingly short work of it. Even if you aren't interested in AIDS per se, the story of how our government responded to this crisis (or, rather, largely failed to) should and will frighten you. An incredible call to action and snapshot of a moment in time and place that might otherwise have been forgotten. And that would be a tragedy.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars AIDS: the definitive story, January 23, 2000

By	"masonx" (Auckland, New Zealand.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: And the Band Played on: Politics, People And the AIDS Epidemic (Library Binding)

In 50 years time when the HIV virus has long past its notoriety and is as treatable as the common cold historians will look back at this period of medical history and the defining chronicle of that time will be laid out in the pages of this book.From beginning to end the many firsthand accounts reveal in clinical detail what was happening at the onset of this plague not only in the gay community but in the wider world at large.The fear the panic the hysteria in the early 80's is almost palpable.That so many health professionals in the U.S. should act in such an unprofessional way is inconceivable,but it happened.There were fortunately a few unsung heroes in those early days:Dr Mary Guinan,Dr Tony Fauci,Larry Kramer from ACTUP,the staffs of the CDC & NHI and many others.There is also occasionally a villain.The less said about Dr Paul Gallo the better.That Shilt's story put a human face to all the statistics was what initially attracted me to his work.He writes a readable tome not loaded down with minutiae.It is a one-man protest against the ignorance of the american public and a staunch attempt to open their eyes.Sadly 20 years after it all began and we are only just starting to win the fight against the virus Randy Shilts is no longer with us having succumbed a few years ago to the disease he knew so much about and wanted so much to beat...He was one of the first of the anti-HIV warriors and for that alone we should mourn his passing. Vaya con dios.