---
product_id: 1702686
title: "And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 20th-Anniversary Edition"
price: "138.61 DT"
currency: TND
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reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.tn/products/1702686-and-the-band-played-on-politics-people-and-the-aids
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---

# Adapted into acclaimed film National Book Critics Circle nominee 20th Anniversary Edition And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 20th-Anniversary Edition

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## Summary

> 📖 Uncover the untold story that changed history and still echoes today.

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- **What is this?** And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 20th-Anniversary Edition
- **How much does it cost?** 138.61 DT with free shipping
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## Key Features

- • **Cultural Impact:** Inspired a critically acclaimed movie and ongoing activism.
- • **Deep Human Insight:** Combines meticulous research with powerful, empathetic storytelling.
- • **Timeless Relevance:** 20+ years later, remains essential reading on public health and social justice.
- • **Award-Winning & Acclaimed:** National Book Critics Circle nominee and international bestseller status.
- • **Investigative Masterpiece:** Randy Shilts' groundbreaking exposé reshaped AIDS discourse forever.

## Overview

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 20th-Anniversary Edition by Randy Shilts is a seminal investigative work that chronicles the early years of the AIDS crisis. This internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed book exposes the political, social, and institutional failures that allowed the epidemic to escalate unchecked. Featuring meticulous research, hundreds of interviews, and a deeply human narrative, it remains a vital resource for understanding the intersection of health, politics, and activism.

## Description

Upon its first publication more than twenty years ago, And the Band Played on was quickly recognized as a masterpiece of investigative reporting. An international bestseller, a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and made into a critically acclaimed movie, Shilts' expose revealed why AIDS was allowed to spread unchecked during the early 80's while the most trusted institutions ignored or denied the threat. One of the few true modern classics, it changed and framed how AIDS was discussed in the following years. Now republished in a special 20th Anniversary edition, And the Band Played On remains one of the essential books of our time.

Review: An Excellent History of AIDS in America and Reflection on Where We are Today - The word “epic” is not too strong a descriptor for Randy Shilts’ 1987 book And the Band Played On, Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic as seen by his compelling and masterful telling of the many heroes and villains whose actions shape the local, state and federal public health and policy responses to AIDS in its first decade. A journalist and gay man writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, he begins his sequential account with a list of the “dramatis personae” and “the bureaucracy” to help the reader comprehend the multitude of people and agencies implicated in the fact that by 1986, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with disease and 20,849 had died. This book helped me understand how the roles of different governmental health agencies, the press, community organizers, and politicians combined to create an epidemic whose severity could have been mitigated if politics, discrimination, fear and greed had been eliminated. It is worth noting Shilts’ sources. These include documents released with the Freedom of Information Act and hundreds of interviews with public health officials, scientists, physicians, activists, and politicians. The reader must decide if the reporting seems fair and balanced. For my part, given Shilts’ experience as a journalist I trust his reliability in reporting the facts. As a gay man, he introduces a human component that is deeply moving and powerful especially when he describes the terrible suffering and lives cut short. Gay men, politicians, and researchers all suffer from equal doses of self-interest and greed. If there was some bias in his book, I feel it was warranted because of the urgency he felt in reporting on a disease about which there was so little concern. In a 1987 New York Times article, the reviewer of Shilts’ book argues that he overstates the impact earlier interventions would have had. I do not agree that Shilts makes any assumption about what earlier interventions could have achieved; rather, he reports the facts and holds all those accountable, including the New York Times, for their negligence. Finally, it is useful to examine what has happened to some of the people in Shilts’ book and where the U.S. is today with respect to the AIDS epidemic. Randy Shilts was diagnosed with HIV soon after his book was published. He died in February, 1994, right as a new group of anti-retroviral “cocktail” drugs became available and AIDS became a chronic disease. Larry Kramer, a gay New York novelist, playwright and activist who appears often in the book, had founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and went on to start the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in 1987. The radical group demands adequate medical research, treatment and health policies improving the lives of people with AIDS and is well known for its “Silence=Death” bumper stickers. Two months ago, Kramer and his partner of several years were married at a New York City hospital because the 78-year old man had bowel obstruction. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2009 an estimated 1,148,200 persons aged 13 and older were living with HIV infection in the U.S. In 2010, there were an estimated 47,500 new infections; nearly two-thirds of these occurred in gay and bisexual men. African-American men and women have incidence rates eight times higher than whites. In Malawi, Africa, where my organization provides primary health care services and HIV counseling and testing, the prevalence is 10% of the population aged 15-49 years. There is concern about the commitment of governments to sustain the funding needed for free anti-retroviral medications in poor countries. AIDS remains a disease of the marginalized and less powerful. The U.S. populations at risk for HIV include men who have sex with men, prisoners, certain ethnic groups and intravenous drug users. Southern states are disproportionately affected (CDC). In the U.S. and globally, there is a need for new drugs to be developed for those who have resistance or suffer from severe side effects. In Malawi, 70% of the country’s health budget depends on foreign donors. The average annual amount of health care dollars spent per citizen is about $30. The health funding can be tied to the political priorities of donor countries as was seen two years ago when the aging and autocratic president expelled a British diplomat resulting in a sharp decrease in international aid. African nations experiencing extreme poverty see corruption and greed at all levels of government and society.
Review: Deadly disease makes humans drop the ball - “Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.” “The primary problems we now face are not scientific problems but social problems involving science.” Such statements certainly provide an impetus to read this classic about the early history of AIDS in America. Though this book is over thirty years old, its meticulous research still communicates how human nature often denies diseased persons respect, compassion, and the resources necessary to recover. Such was certainly true in the 1980s with HIV/AIDS when the ball was dropped by almost everyone – politicians, doctors, scientists, activists, those with a disease, those afraid of a disease, the gay community, and the business community, to list a few. Reading this in an era of a new global pandemic (COVID), I am struck by the emotions that AIDS evoked during the 1980s and how those same emotions are reflected in encounters with a new disease. Denial, bargaining, pride, and greed are all common, human responses when encountering deadly threats. In this book, Shilts brings to life how those factors played into the advent of AIDS. He educates readers not just about HIV but about social responses to adversity. This book does not delve into pure science much. Indeed, if anything, it’s a little light on biology. However, what it lacks in hard science, it makes up for in human concern and focuses on four leading cities: San Francisco, New York City, Washington, and Paris. It treats impacted individuals with a depth of empathic understanding and detailed reporting that sucks the reader in. Intrigue is built section by section, chapter by chapter, part by part, through presenting the right facts in the right order. Few heroes dwell in this book; in fact, most heroes end up dying. Instead, this story becomes a malady of errors where human weaknesses continually jeopardize ultimate success. Forty years later, AIDS remains with us. Successful treatments exist, but they are not cures. Vaccine trials, in which I am involved as a community advisor, have repeatedly failed. Homosexuals are less socially stigmatized in America, thanks to prolonged efforts of activists. Indeed, homophobia, the norm in this book, has become more stigmatized. Reagan’s legacy has positively become bound up with the defeat of totalitarian communism, but this book reminds us that his legacy also negatively reflected a coldness when presented with his people’s suffering. This book deserves a serious read by just about everyone due to the accuracy of its depiction of human nature. As COVID reminds us, pandemics can still occur, and humans can still struggle to squarely face their realities. This book gripped me so much that while reading, I allocated most of my spare energy and all of my spare time towards digging deeper into the subject. If more people read this book decades after the emergence of AIDS, perhaps America and the world can deal with the next pandemic better. (But don’t count on it!) The obvious, most recent options to study about pandemics are the Spanish flu and AIDS. Having studied both, I definitely think this book deserves its place on a short reading list about modern epidemics and the sociology of disease.

## Features

- Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic, paperback

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #45,771 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #2 in AIDS & HIV (Books) #5 in AIDS (Books) #24 in History of Medicine (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.7 out of 5 stars 2,181 Reviews |

## Images

![And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 20th-Anniversary Edition - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71RWaVAwXVL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ An Excellent History of AIDS in America and Reflection on Where We are Today
*by A***W on December 15, 2013*

The word “epic” is not too strong a descriptor for Randy Shilts’ 1987 book And the Band Played On, Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic as seen by his compelling and masterful telling of the many heroes and villains whose actions shape the local, state and federal public health and policy responses to AIDS in its first decade. A journalist and gay man writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, he begins his sequential account with a list of the “dramatis personae” and “the bureaucracy” to help the reader comprehend the multitude of people and agencies implicated in the fact that by 1986, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with disease and 20,849 had died. This book helped me understand how the roles of different governmental health agencies, the press, community organizers, and politicians combined to create an epidemic whose severity could have been mitigated if politics, discrimination, fear and greed had been eliminated. It is worth noting Shilts’ sources. These include documents released with the Freedom of Information Act and hundreds of interviews with public health officials, scientists, physicians, activists, and politicians. The reader must decide if the reporting seems fair and balanced. For my part, given Shilts’ experience as a journalist I trust his reliability in reporting the facts. As a gay man, he introduces a human component that is deeply moving and powerful especially when he describes the terrible suffering and lives cut short. Gay men, politicians, and researchers all suffer from equal doses of self-interest and greed. If there was some bias in his book, I feel it was warranted because of the urgency he felt in reporting on a disease about which there was so little concern. In a 1987 New York Times article, the reviewer of Shilts’ book argues that he overstates the impact earlier interventions would have had. I do not agree that Shilts makes any assumption about what earlier interventions could have achieved; rather, he reports the facts and holds all those accountable, including the New York Times, for their negligence. Finally, it is useful to examine what has happened to some of the people in Shilts’ book and where the U.S. is today with respect to the AIDS epidemic. Randy Shilts was diagnosed with HIV soon after his book was published. He died in February, 1994, right as a new group of anti-retroviral “cocktail” drugs became available and AIDS became a chronic disease. Larry Kramer, a gay New York novelist, playwright and activist who appears often in the book, had founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and went on to start the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in 1987. The radical group demands adequate medical research, treatment and health policies improving the lives of people with AIDS and is well known for its “Silence=Death” bumper stickers. Two months ago, Kramer and his partner of several years were married at a New York City hospital because the 78-year old man had bowel obstruction. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2009 an estimated 1,148,200 persons aged 13 and older were living with HIV infection in the U.S. In 2010, there were an estimated 47,500 new infections; nearly two-thirds of these occurred in gay and bisexual men. African-American men and women have incidence rates eight times higher than whites. In Malawi, Africa, where my organization provides primary health care services and HIV counseling and testing, the prevalence is 10% of the population aged 15-49 years. There is concern about the commitment of governments to sustain the funding needed for free anti-retroviral medications in poor countries. AIDS remains a disease of the marginalized and less powerful. The U.S. populations at risk for HIV include men who have sex with men, prisoners, certain ethnic groups and intravenous drug users. Southern states are disproportionately affected (CDC). In the U.S. and globally, there is a need for new drugs to be developed for those who have resistance or suffer from severe side effects. In Malawi, 70% of the country’s health budget depends on foreign donors. The average annual amount of health care dollars spent per citizen is about $30. The health funding can be tied to the political priorities of donor countries as was seen two years ago when the aging and autocratic president expelled a British diplomat resulting in a sharp decrease in international aid. African nations experiencing extreme poverty see corruption and greed at all levels of government and society.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Deadly disease makes humans drop the ball
*by S***N on August 6, 2021*

“Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.” “The primary problems we now face are not scientific problems but social problems involving science.” Such statements certainly provide an impetus to read this classic about the early history of AIDS in America. Though this book is over thirty years old, its meticulous research still communicates how human nature often denies diseased persons respect, compassion, and the resources necessary to recover. Such was certainly true in the 1980s with HIV/AIDS when the ball was dropped by almost everyone – politicians, doctors, scientists, activists, those with a disease, those afraid of a disease, the gay community, and the business community, to list a few. Reading this in an era of a new global pandemic (COVID), I am struck by the emotions that AIDS evoked during the 1980s and how those same emotions are reflected in encounters with a new disease. Denial, bargaining, pride, and greed are all common, human responses when encountering deadly threats. In this book, Shilts brings to life how those factors played into the advent of AIDS. He educates readers not just about HIV but about social responses to adversity. This book does not delve into pure science much. Indeed, if anything, it’s a little light on biology. However, what it lacks in hard science, it makes up for in human concern and focuses on four leading cities: San Francisco, New York City, Washington, and Paris. It treats impacted individuals with a depth of empathic understanding and detailed reporting that sucks the reader in. Intrigue is built section by section, chapter by chapter, part by part, through presenting the right facts in the right order. Few heroes dwell in this book; in fact, most heroes end up dying. Instead, this story becomes a malady of errors where human weaknesses continually jeopardize ultimate success. Forty years later, AIDS remains with us. Successful treatments exist, but they are not cures. Vaccine trials, in which I am involved as a community advisor, have repeatedly failed. Homosexuals are less socially stigmatized in America, thanks to prolonged efforts of activists. Indeed, homophobia, the norm in this book, has become more stigmatized. Reagan’s legacy has positively become bound up with the defeat of totalitarian communism, but this book reminds us that his legacy also negatively reflected a coldness when presented with his people’s suffering. This book deserves a serious read by just about everyone due to the accuracy of its depiction of human nature. As COVID reminds us, pandemics can still occur, and humans can still struggle to squarely face their realities. This book gripped me so much that while reading, I allocated most of my spare energy and all of my spare time towards digging deeper into the subject. If more people read this book decades after the emergence of AIDS, perhaps America and the world can deal with the next pandemic better. (But don’t count on it!) The obvious, most recent options to study about pandemics are the Spanish flu and AIDS. Having studied both, I definitely think this book deserves its place on a short reading list about modern epidemics and the sociology of disease.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Best Book I Read in 2005
*by M***E on July 25, 2006*

And the Band Played On is an act of phenomenal research and writing, and a very frightening book on many levels because of the political wrangling, political bumbling, and political disregard for a medical crisis which cost the lives of so many, the scientific in-fighting which slowed medical break throughs and sacrificed lives, and the insanity of national agencies which were supposed to be saving lives, but which in this case knowingly risked the lives of many either because they didn't want to do the work, didn't want to spend the money, or didn't want to anger certain political groups. Gay men were deemed to be utterly dispensable by so many. It's the sign of a good book when it brings out strong emotions. This book provoked in me anger, rage, confusion, compassion, sadness, and tears. I wish I could thank all those, like Don Francis, Dr. Michael Gottlieb, Dr. Selma Dritz, Marc Conant, Dr. Dale Lawrence, Paul Volberding, and Dr. Arye Rubenstein, who tried so hard, against such overwhelming odds, to save lives quickly. I would also chastise President Ronald Reagan and Merve Silverman and give Margaret Heckler and Bob Gallo a piece of my mind -- the skunks! I am thankful that there are politicians like Orrin Hatch and people behind the scenes like Bill Kraus and Cleve Jones. Though he was woefully slow in responding I'm grateful for the response of C. Everett Koop and that once having made his stand he never wavered and took it to the media wherever he could. Randy Shilts did an excellent job of showing the culture in the United States and France and the politics in the medical and scientific communities and the political posture and arena during the 1980s. He also humanized the crisis by following many of the patients from onset of medical problems to death (Enno Poersch, Gary Walsh, Frances Borchelt, Bill Kraus, and Gaetan Dugas) and by following the doctors and scientists in their fight to discover the properties of this terrible disease and conquer it. It was enlightening and helpful to have the book structured as a time line. The amount and variety of research done for this book is astounding, requiring Shilts to conduct hundreds of interviews and read millions of pages of articles and medical material. In reading this book, my education has been enhanced and my life is more full and forever changed. It is a great tragedy that AIDS killed Randy Shilts as it had killed so many other innocents, and that as I write this there is still no cure for AIDS. As far as I can tell, it is again being largely ignored by governments and the medical community. Where will the next Randy Shilts, Bill Kraus, and Dr. Gottlieb and the other saviors come from--and will they come soon enough?

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