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(More customer reviews)This collection of newspaper articles and essays about AIDS since its discovery to just this past year is an absolutely riveting read. The foreword by long-time AIDS activist Larry Kramer is brutally concise; indeed, it feels like a slap in the face. Where were you all when AIDS was beginning to bloom in poor countries? Why were there no revolutions sparked by this epidemic? Why weren't people angry? He raises tough questions that still go unsolved over 20 years later. He also lists off a good many well-known writers, playwrights and artists, all of whom have never written a single word about AIDS. Are they simply ignoring it, or are they just afraid to voice their opinions?
Another fascinating aspect of this book is the early articles and essays, showcasing a time when there were only 41 cases of a "rare cancer" in homosexuals in the San Francisco and New York areas. This article was written by Lawrence K. Altman for the New York Times in 1981. To think that this epidemic, twenty years later, would soon reach the death toll of the Black Plague from the fourteenth century is just mind-boggling. All the essays in this volume are astounding in their breadth of description; vivid images of AIDS's social, cultural, political and economic implications, all of them catastrophic. They point fingers at everyone from the highest branches of government to the most insignificant by-stander, everyone who in good will is letting this virus slowly wipe out humanity. It's hard to imagine how far-spread this epidemic can be in another twenty years, and I dare anyone to read these writings and not shake their head in disbelief and anger. It's been too long since this virus took over, and it's about time people stood up, willing to make a change. Difficult to read at times, but it should be required reading for anybody who calls themself a citizen of Planet Earth.
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An estimated 40 million people live with HIV, the precursor virus to AIDS, the most devastating disease that humankind has ever faced. Most people with HIV will die of the disease within the decade, and in Africa, where in the sub-Saharan states HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death, over two million people died in 2001 alone. AIDS has profoundly changed the world. Now in AIDS: A World Changed, longtime gay journalist and author Chris Bull has assembled a landmark collection that will be necessary reading for a broad and diverse constituency, from public health students and professionals to academics, activists, policy makers, and the millions whose lives have been indelibly marked by the epidemic. Included are essays, polemics, fiction, and investigative journalism—pieces that helped us to understand the epidemic and its ramifications and that have withstood the test of time—including Larry Kramer's incendiary manifesto "1,112 and Counting," and selections from Mark Schoofs's Pulitzer prize–winning series AIDS: The Agony of Africa and from Tony Kushner's Angels in America. This long-overdue collection also includes the most important writing on AIDS by Michael Bronski, Gabriel Rotello, Jeffrey Escoffier, Cindy Patton, Randy Shilts, Michael Callen, Susan Sontag, Paul Monette, Donna Minkowitz, Barbara Smith, Amber Hollibaugh, Gore Vidal, Jeffrey Schmaltz, Michaelangelo Signorile, Judith Valente, and many others.
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