Shilts first assigns blame for the epidemic to the Reagan administration. He could have toned down this tiresome trumpeting and not surrendered his message: very few mainstream newspapers covered the epidemic before it was sexy news. Frequently throughout And the Band Played On, he notes that a reporter from a San Francisco newspaper or a journalist from the Chronicle was the first person to draw attention to this or that part of the epidemic. Shilts covered the epidemic as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. That turning point, Shilts wrote, marked the end of the media's ability to neglect an epidemic that had been categorized as a gay disease.

Attention and funding was not forthcoming until Rock Hudson, the 1950s Hollywood romantic leading man, was diagnosed with AIDS on his deathbed in 1985. This bitter recollection of the politics and bureaucracy that hampered AIDS education, prevention, and research resoundingly indicts the Reagan administration and mainstream media for ignoring the epidemic. Yet the book rings with all the passion and dedication of a staunch activist. He hid his diagnosis until almost a year before his death in 1994 because he didn't want to become an activist -he wanted to remain simply a reporter. The day Randy Shilts submitted his manuscript for And the Band Played On, he learned he had tested positive for AIDS.

Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: People, Politics, and the AIDS Epidemic Video of guest speakers and Master Classes (requires RealPlayer).KEEP UP with journalists' beats in Blogfolio, updated throughout the day. READ the Best of Portfolio, featuring a selection of the best published work from Portfolio students.

And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts