In Reckoning: Ten Seasons in Fire Island Pines (Sunstone Press), the reader follows an extended period in the life of a gay man, Miles Cigolle. The book, written and narrated by Cigolle as its central character, covers the years from 1988 to 2000. Reckoning is thus an individual, personal story, but one that also reveals a critical moment of social history, highlighting how the supportive communal structure that was engaged in the early responses to AIDS had many roots in a place synonymous with sybaritic hedonism.
Read moreBlack Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague by Steven K. Randall
As life begins to resume a sense of normalcy, it’s important to reflect upon the lessons learned from the pandemic. Numerous parallels may be drawn to the bubonic plague outbreak of San Francisco at the start of the 20th century. Black Death at the Golden Gate by David K. Randall provides an account of the efforts led by public health officials to combat this disease. Randall is a senior reporter at Reuters who drew upon a wide array of sources, including telegrams and contemporary newspapers, to construct a narrative of the plague. Each chapter provides thorough illustrations of the physicians, scientists, and patients involved, to further draw the reader into the immediacy of the events.
Read moreBreath Taking: The Power, Fragility, and Future of Our Extraordinary Lungs by Michael J. Stephen, MD.
Everyone is thinking and talking about breathing, oxygenation and respiratory particles these days. Breath Taking, an enlightening new book by Dr. Michael J. Stephen arrives just in time for a curious public who wants to educate themselves about the lungs in order to understand the effects of the SARS-Cov 2 virus pandemic. Over the past two decades Dr. Stephen, who has been on the front line caring for COVID-19 patients (and recovered from the virus himself), has studied advanced end-stage lung diseases and worked with patients at diverse locales, including a Massachusetts prison hospital and a pediatric HIV clinic in Cape Town, South Africa.
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