Bookshelf: And The Band Played On

I was reading And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts when Grace was born and had about 100 pages to go. I should have been able to finish it during the week o' waiting, but I had the concentration of a gnat so I would read a paragraph and then nap, whine, eat, or head for the loo. But, I finally got back to it and it's an amazing book! Shilts chronicles the emergence of AIDS, how it spread, who was affected, the scientific process of identifying the virus and its transmission, and the politics around financing research and education about the disease, particularly the role of the Reagan administration. Shilts spares no detail and builds the book chronologically, which is especially interesting because we now know the horrors of the AIDS epidemic - if only we could travel back in time and shake some sense into people. He keeps it very readable through human interest angles, tracing the experiences of a huge number of real people, including AIDS victims, CDC researchers, public health officials, gay activists, and politicians. It's a very dense book, but I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the intersection of politics and public health/policy.

Yes, in this post I did mention toilets and time travel. It may be time to take this blog to the big time.