World AIDS Day Booklist

An ethnographic portrait of HIV-positive black women and their interaction with the U.S. healthcare system, Holding On reveals how gradients of poverty and social difference shape women’s health care outcomes and, by extension, women’s experience of health policy reform.

2017 Lambda Literary award winner—
The definitive history of the battle to halt the AIDS epidemic, and the powerful stories of the gay activists who refused to die without a fight. France tells the story of the men and women who watched their friends and lovers fall: ignored by public officials, religious leaders, and the nation at large. Confronted with shame and hatred, they chose to fight for their right to live. We witness the founding of ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group), the rise of an underground drug market in opposition to the prohibitively expensive (and sometimes toxic) AZT, and the gradual movement toward a lifesaving medical breakthrough. —Provided by publisher.

Dr. Bruce J. Hillman dissects the war of egos, money, academic power, and Hollywood clout that advanced AIDS research even as it compromised the career of the scientist who discovered the disease.

Science journalist David Quammen traces the genetic origins of the AIDS epidemic by reviewing scientific literature, consulting researchers, and traveling to the geographic source of the deadly disease.

In this gripping memoir of the AIDS years (1981–1996), Sarah Schulman recalls how much of the rebellious queer culture, cheap rents, and a vibrant downtown arts movement vanished almost overnight to be replaced by gay conservative spokespeople and mainstream consumerism.

"Novelist and critic Dale Peck's latest work—part memoir, part extended essay—is a foray into what the author calls "the second half of the first half of the AIDS epidemic," i.e., the period between 1987, when the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was founded, and 1996, when the advent of combination therapy transformed AIDS from a virtual death sentence into a chronic manageable illness.

Sean Strub, founder of the groundbreaking POZ magazine, producer of the hit play The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, and the first openly HIV-positive candidate for U.S. Congress, charts his remarkable life—a story of politics and AIDS and a powerful testament to loss, hope, and survival.

Probably best known for his biographies City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara (definitive, that one) and the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor, Gooch turns his fine eye on himself. This memoir recalls his blazing life in 1980s New York and intense affair with film director Howard Brookner, who suddenly fell ill with a devastating new illness called AIDS.

Peter Piot, founding executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), recounts his experience as a clinician, scientist, and activist. As he struggled to get ahead of the disease, Piot found science does little good when it operates independently of politics and economics, and politics is worthless if it rejects scientific evidence and respect for human rights.

Now 79 years old, Sister Abegail looks back over her life and recounts the remarkable events that led to her becoming the mother of dozens of children orphaned by the AIDS crisis in South Africa.

Reconstructing their life together from a remarkable cache of her father's journals, letters, and writings, Alysia Abbott gives us an unforgettable portrait of a tumultuous, historic time in San Francisco as well as an exquisitely moving account of a father's legacy and a daughter's love.

Since the early days of the AIDS epidemic, many bizarre and dangerous hypotheses have been advanced to explain the origins of the disease. In this compelling book, Nicoli Nattrass explores the social and political factors prolonging the erroneous belief that the American government manufactured the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to be used as a biological weapon, as well as the myth's consequences for behavior, especially within African American and black South African communities.

Perry N. Halkitis examines the strategies for survival and coping employed by HIV-positive gay men, who together constitute the first generation of long-term survivors of the disease.

AIDS at 30 is the first history of HIV/AIDS written for a general audience that emphasizes the medical response to the epidemic.

Iweala embarks on a remarkable journey through his native Nigeria, meeting individuals and communities that are struggling daily to understand both the impact and meaning of HIV/AIDS. He speaks with people from all walks of life—the ill and the healthy, doctors, nurses, truck drivers, sex workers, shopkeepers, students, parents, and children. Their testimonies are uplifting, alarming, humorous, surprising, and always unflinchingly candid.

Murphy, who has long reported on HIV/AIDS, LGBTQ issues, pop culture, travel, and the arts, here travels through New York City from the AIDS-scarred 1980s to the hipster-dominated 2000s to the wealth-drenched 2020s, all by focusing on a single East Village building.

After her beloved uncle dies of AIDS-related complications, fourteen-year-old June Elbus strikes up a secret friendship with his boyfriend in this heartbreaking coming-of-age story, set during the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.

A stunning story of three doctors' struggles in San Francisco during the first decade of the AIDS epidemic.

Seattle, 1983. Frightened by the growing epidemic that has stricken his friends, Jeff flees New York for the Pacific Northwest, only to realize AIDS has a foothold in his new home.

British Fantasy Award winner Chaz Brenchley has crafted a deeply personal ghost story of dead twins and mad mothers, of Moleskine notebooks and teen friendships, of AIDS caregivers and more.