Outstanding book chronicles the fight against HIV/AIDS

A critically acclaimed 640-page book by David France belongs at the top of your reading list.

An acquaintance of mine years ago, France has created in How to Survive a Plague a vivid review of the battle to understand the pandemic, fight U.S. government indifference, create a unified activist front, overcome bureaucratic chaos and ultimately learn how to treat AIDS.

The author’s exhaustive review seems to have him everywhere all the time from the first diagnosis to essentially the latest pharmaceutical successes.  In doing so, he spares nothing about his personal life, confessing how deeply he felt about the witness he bore and the relationships he treasured.

His Amazon bio outlines a distinguished career prior to having written this tour de force, noting

Who died and left you. . . the buyer?

Flickr photo by Shaheer Shahid

When it comes to purchasing a property in which someone died, good luck easily finding out that was the case. One reason for secrecy: Such a property generally takes longer to sell.

It doesn’t matter whether there even is a suspicion that someone perished from natural causes, accidental ones, murder or suicide, but state law protects brokers, owners and mere occupants from having to disclose that information.

Nor must they disclose