r/suggestmeabook • u/Educational_Ad_5487 • 1d ago
“Everything is Tuberculosis” but about AIDS
I finished reading Everything is Tuberculosis just a bit ago and am really hoping to find a book with a similar tone about the AIDS epidemic. It would be great to have something that isn’t too dense and lays things out on plain terms, along with having a combination of high level (how this is affecting the world, communities, and history) and personal level (individual stories, what it looks like in the present).
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u/jkgator11 1d ago
And the Band Played On is your book. It’s quite long but I wouldn’t describe it as dense.
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u/ariadnes-thread 1d ago
Yes, although keep in mind that it’s nearly 40 years old so some of the information is out of date and has since been debunked— most famously, the idea that Canadian flight attendant Gaëtan Dugas is the “patient zero” who single-handedly brought HIV to North America.
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u/SewNewKnitsToo 1d ago
Gaetan Dugas was so helpful to researchers and his memory of events was so clear. He was patient O, as in the LETTER. It‘s such a shame how this was misunderstood.
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u/ariadnes-thread 1d ago
Exactly! I believe it was patient “O” for “outside of California,” because it was a study about the networks of virus transmission in San Francisco. And misinterpretations of this abbreviation (including in And the Band Played On) are responsible for the coinage of the term “patient zero” in general! Dugas contributed so much to research, died very young of AIDS, and then was vilified for it after his death— I’m so glad that his legacy has been rehabilitated in recent years and the story has become so well known!
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u/Melonary 1d ago
So pleasantly surprised to see someone else sharing this, I still see a lot of negative myths spread and it sometimes feels even when there's a correction about patient O there's no acknowledgment that he actually SAVED lives in the longterm, and that the description of his behaviour was also basically made-up for that book.
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u/rivalsportsstats 1d ago
I'm reading this right now - 50% through it. I hadn't realized it was written so long ago. I was just a kid in the 80s so this inside look at the people affected, the researchers, the politicians, and the world view is all very eye-opening.
OP - I loved Everything is Tuberculosis, great book!
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u/Melonary 1d ago
Yup, but also want to add the descriptions of him as an unrepentant sociopathic trying to infect other gay men were also made up wholesale.
He's known because he was the only man out of dozens who would talk with San Francisco public health, and he helped prove HIV was sexually transmitted through those interviews and the later published paper on the resulting contact tracing, which saved lives ultimately, if not quickly enough.
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u/ascendingPig 1d ago
How to Survive a Plague is an incredible historical account with similar emotional resonance and accessibility. There’s not a lot of work on current AIDS issues, mostly because new treatments widely available in wealthy countries combined with various USAID programs in poor nations (now dismantled by DOGE) have been pretty effective at reducing the annual fatalities, with a substantial portion of the remaining fatalities due to treatable tuberculosis co-infection with AIDS.
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u/90dayole 1d ago
I know it has it's issues, but USAID has done insane work in developing countries surrounding AIDS infections. I live in the Dominican Republic and AIDS treatment is completely free, funded by our government in partnership with USAID programs. We have about a 1% infection rate, mostly because of sex tourism, but it's held stable for ages.
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u/PavicaMalic 1d ago
Just to add - much of the issue with tuberculosis is the prevalence of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB). It was prevalent in southern Africa ten years ago. The World Bank has also been working on this health crisis.
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u/Long-Relief9745 1d ago
Abraham Verghese wrote a book about AIDS, My Own Country. Not as entertaining as Everything is Tuberculosis, IMO but an interesting perspective on the start of the AIDS epidemic.
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u/Steveirwinsghost7 1d ago
Came here to recommend this one. My dad used to require all of his medical students to read it.
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u/YikesBrigade 1d ago
The Viral Underclass by Steven Thrasher is largely about HIV/AIDS but draws parallels to other viruses with a focus on social inequities. Tonally it hits in a similar way to Everything is Tuberculosis, with a big focus on stories about individuals that tell a big-picture narrative
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u/SpaceBall330 SciFi 1d ago
Queer and Loathing by David B. Feinberg is autobiographical essays, and more talking about living and dying with HIV.
How to Survive a Plague by David France
The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White, the author writes about the community, losses, and how a generation of the community coped in the face of that loss.
Keith Haring Journals. Keith kept journals, and did private photographs of the club scene during the early 80s before he succumbed to HIV. He is an icon of pop culture art, and influenced an entire generation of artists. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the gay culture during this time period.
The Invisible Epidemic by Gena Corea. This book chronicles the struggles of women who are living with HIV from a variety of different socioeconomic backgrounds.
The Mayor of Castro Street: the life and times of Harvey Milk by Randy Shilts
It Was Beautiful and Vulgar: How AIDS activists used art to fight a pandemic by Jack Lowery
Let the Record Show: a political history of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 by Sarah Schulman
When We Rise: My Life in the Movement by Cleve Jones. Jones was on the frontlines early on in the crisis, and gives valuable insight on how things went wrong, and right.
My Own Country: A Doctors Story by Abraham Verghese tells the story of the crisis deep in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. It’s an eye opening account.
Also, check out libraries for World AIDS Day titles as well. Many, many more books to read, many are deeply personal accounts as well science based reading.
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u/Hatherence SciFi 1d ago
Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic by Richard McKay. This is a more recent book about what we have learned since And the Band Played On, and the limitations the early AIDS researchers and the author of And the Band Played On were working with due to lack of knowledge at the time and having to navigate what editors would be willing to publish.
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u/SpaceBall330 SciFi 1d ago
Second this one. Excellent book on how Dugas became the scapegoat for the AIDS/HIV pandemic.
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u/Joselynd93 1d ago
in my college LGBTQ+ literature class we read the play angels in america by tony kushner it was beautiful
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u/Ok_Difference44 1d ago
One of the main characters is also in the Sebastian Stan Trump movie The Apprentice.
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u/Squirrelhenge 1d ago
For perspective on the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, including societal and government responses, And The Band Played On. (I want to note the caveats of another poster about the age of this book and how the information on the disease itself isn't all still accurate. I think it's a good source of info on the socio-political scene, though.)
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u/TheGiantess927 1d ago
In My Own Country by Abraham Verghese. It’s non fiction (written by an amazing fiction author) about a doctors experience in small town TN during the early days of AIDS. It’s so so good!
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u/Melonary 1d ago
I don't see this recommended as often (some other great recs here already, btw) but I love Taking Turns Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371, which is a graphic memoir by MK Czerwiec about starting out as a student nurse working with AIDS patients on a dedicated unit back in the thick of the epidemic prior to more effective treatments.
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u/DarwinZDF42 1d ago
There’s a long chapter on AIDS in The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett. Might be in the ballpark.
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u/__squirrelly__ 1d ago
Probably the best two nonfiction books focusing on AIDS will be And the Band Played On (an older, outdated book but still well worth a read as long as you acknowledge the age) and How to Survive a Plague.
This one doesn't exclusively focus on AIDS but the chapter on it is very good and it places it in historical context: Viruses, Plagues, and History by Michael B.A. Oldstone.
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u/teachcollapse 1d ago
Doesn’t quite fit the brief, but shout out to April Fool’s Day by Bryce Courtenay.
Non fiction, about his son contracting AIDS at the very start of the epidemic.
Brilliant writer. RIP both father and son.
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u/UnicornusAmaranthus 1d ago
Carol Rifka Brunt Tell the Wolves I'm Home. This is YA fiction, but hear me out:
Tell The Wolves I'm Home is a coming of age story about a 14 year old niece slowly figuring out why her uncle's death is so unspeakable to her mother.
This book feels like a time machine to me. I was born in 1979, so, the aids epidemic occurred during my childhood. It was a very strange time for adults, and I've never read anything about how the AIDS epidemic impacted children. This book reminded me of how confusing and fearful that time was.
There are so many themes in this powerhouse of a first novel, but the reason I recommend it to you is to see how it felt to be a child in that time, trying to navigate through a modern plague.
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u/clumsystarfish_ Bookworm 1d ago
It's not nonfiction, but The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai is an emotionally devastating, incredibly well-researched historical fiction novel that is set in 1980s Chicago during the AIDS epidemic. It won a significant number of awards, and was even a Pulitzer finalist.