Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic
- Contents
- Review Quotes
- Awards

List of Abbreviations
0. Introduction: “He Is Still Out There”
1. What Came Before Zero?
2. The Cluster Study
3. “Humanizing This Disease”
4. Giving a Face to the Epidemic
5. Ghosts and Blood
6. Locating Gaétan Dugas’s Views
Epilogue: Zero Hour—Making Histories of the North American AIDS Epidemic
Appendix: Oral History Interviews
Bibliography
Index
“How do myths come into being? Why do some myths fade away whereas others become part of history? What roles do myths play in our understandings of the past and our attempts at making the present comprehensible? These questions lie at the heart of Richard A. McKay´s wonderful book Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic. . .McKay brilliantly discloses how the questions of responsibility, moral and how to have sex in an epidemic were negotiated in the early years of the AIDS epidemic. . .One of the book’s biggest achievements is that we are constantly reminded–by its approach to historical material, integrating archival material, newspaper articles, oral history interviews, art and media material–how representations of the past (truths, tales, or myths) have their own history which continues to live in the present.”
Choice Magazine: CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Awards
Won
Forum for the History of Science in America: Philip J. Pauly Book Prize
Short Listed
The Publishing Triangle: Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
Finalist
History: American History
Sociology: Medical
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