Summary and Reviews of The Invisible People by Greg Behrman

Media Reviews

The New York Times - Sheri Fink Well researched and unsparing, The Invisible People presents many of the more maddening and inexcusable reasons for the languishing American response to global AIDS in the 1990's, including Congressional antagonism to foreign aid spending, passive racism, and disarray among United Nations health officials, who failed to offer plausible global figures on H.I.V. prevalence until 1998. Mr. Behrman also points to the early silence of domestic AIDS activists, African-American leaders and heads of countries being ravaged by the disease, although he fails to suggest what types of health programs could have been used to fight global AIDS before effective treatments existed.

The Washington Post - Lisa Keen Greg Behrman's assessment of America's response to the global AIDS pandemic is reminiscent of Randy Shilts's 1988 bestseller, And the Band Played On. Where Shilts traced the shortcomings of the federal government's response to AIDS in the United States in the 1980s, Behrman documents its failures on other continents, particularly Africa.

The Washington Post's Book World [The] book may be too late and too far ahead of its time Its likely readers will be people who already care and those, in the distant future, who seek to answer a question that Washington Post editorial writer Sebastian Mallaby posed almost two years ago How could our rich and civilized society allow a known and beatable enemy to kill millions of people?

Library Journal - Grant A. Fredericksen Urgent action was needed, and the UN was seen as the best vehicle to lead the fight; the United States was the obvious country to provide the bulk of the aid. Unfortunately, politics, ignorance, and denial intervened, and AIDS has now outstripped medical efforts to stop its spread. [This is] riveting and important reading. Highly recommended.

Booklist - Donna Chavez Behrman traces how the last two decades of ultraconservative American government combined with such world events as the fall of the former Soviet Union to facilitate universal denial and the diversion of valuable resources, and hence, treatment, from the millions dying for lack of medical and scientific attention.

Kirkus Reviews A study of the US government's failure to react meaningfully to an epidemic that is refashioning the social, economic, and geopolitical dimensions of our world. ....At once white paper and polemical study of demographic and epidemiological trends--and a hard glimpse of government's role in world healthcare.

Publishers Weekly Behrman's account, impassioned but fair, describes a moral failure that escalated to tragic dimensions because we allowed its victims to remain invisible for too long.

 Joshua Cooper Ramo - former Senior Editor, World Section, Time Greg Behrman's The Invisible People is what reporting on global AIDS has been missing a detailed, patient and balanced assessment of how a complete tragedy unfolded more or less in public view. Fifty years from now, when the world wonders how our modern society let 100 million people die of a disease for which treatment was just hours away by plane, Behrman's book will help provide the answer. His vivid prose makes a terrible tragedy more comprehensible--and more awful. This is a great and important book.

 Philip Bennett, Assistant Managing Editor/Foreign News, The Washington Post Greg Behrman has solved a mystery at the center of the worldwide AIDS epidemic as tens of millions have died, why have rich and powerful countries responded so feebly? His answer is profoundly disturbing and provocative, and gripping reading. Written with passion and skill, The Invisible People reveals that when it comes to AIDS, all politics is global. This is not simply a story of victims and villains, but of quixotic heroes, and of the mortal drama at the intersection of science, politics, money and foreign policy. Behrman shows that the humanitarian crisis of AIDS is also 'one of the deadliest policy failures in the history of the U.S. government.' It will haunt us for generations.

 Robert Bilheimer - Oscar nominated Director and Producer, A Closer Walk Greg Behrman's brilliant account of the U.S. response--or lack of it--to the AIDS pandemic has all the intrigue, suspense, and profound melancholy of a Le Carre novel. Mr. Behrman's story, however, is fact, not fiction, and therein lies the tragedy. There are heroes aplenty in Mr. Behrman's book-- tireless advocates for health, dignity, and human rights--and they are its inspiration. I can't imagine a more important book to read at this point in time. If ever there was a wake-up call, this is it.

 Theodore C. Sorensen Save this book to explain to our survivors how we failed to act.

Reader Reviews

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