My apologies if this is the wrong sub to ask this question. Can one of you recommend a good book on the History of the early (as in, in the 80’s) AIDS epidemic? I was a little kid back then and I remember being very impressed about what was going on with the epidemic back then. I already read “And The Band Played On” by Randy Shilts, but I wonder if there is a more recent book with more information about the first years of the epidemic. Thank you very much!
I would recommend Richard McKay's Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic. It's mainly focused on one of the "main characters" of the early epidemic, Gaëtan Dugas, who was of course heavily featured in Shilts' book and wrongly identified as the "patient zero" of the epidemic in North America. McKay goes through a good bit of the early history of the epidemic to explain why the idea of Dugas as patient zero made no sense scientifically, as well as looking at the social impacts of the epidemic and Shilts' work on it. I just read it myself a couple of months ago (and watched the documentary based on it, Killing Patient Zero, which I also highly recommend) and really enjoyed it.