I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. I found this book incredibly interesting the author really kept me hooked until the end. very well written I highly recommend.

Highly recommended. Everyone should read this book. I'm surprised it hasn't exploded into the scene yet, even after the publication of the first edition. This controversial book which offers a heavily fact-supported theory on how the AIDS epidemic started should be everyone's subject of conversation right now.

I don’t normally go for these types of books because they tend to drag on and make me feel like I’m an illiterate middle Schooler. However, and I know it’s weird, but I’ve been wanting to learn more about aids after it was talked about in another book I’ve read. I found this book to be genuinely interesting. I liked how not only did it talk about the sciences but also the history that surrounded it.

Having read Randy Shilts' And The Band Played On, The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett and The River by Edward Hooper, I think I'm in a good position to say that this is an incredibly detailed review of the origins of AIDs, not only dealing with its scientific/genetic composition but also covering the ecological, historical and social factors that came into play. Some of the details are saddening and shocking like the family of three who died of AIDS in 1974 (he was a merchant seaman who made frequent stops and African ports), before scientists even knew what AIDS was (a very prescient doctor kept blood samples).
If it has one slight defect, there is on display a basically French approach to African colonisation, but then again I am so accustomed to this been offered from an Anglo centric point of view that I found it refreshing.
This is a re-edition of what will almost certainly become a classic. Hopefully one day a similar book will be published on Covid 19.

Hands down, this is the best non-fiction book I've read in recent memory. Perhaps ever. It is a fascinating blend of medical mystery, political history, and sociology that illuminates so much about the history of a devastating disease that's claimed the lives of over 30 million people. And guess what? It's our own making: HIV is a ultimately product of Western colonialism/neocolonialism, including massive population shifts, poverty, and delivering countless intravenous injections without proper sanitization.

One of my favorite sections, toward the end of the book, is about Gaëtan Dugas, the Canadian flight attendant who has been maligned as Patient Zero. Dugas was posthumously considered responsible for bringing HIV to the US from Haiti and engaging in nearly sociopathic spread, telling his partners after sex that he had AIDS. Pépin provides a really nuanced treatment, detailing how medical evidence shows AIDS was certainly present beforehand and how Dugas actually provided a lot of help to CDC investigators, though he probably was a big force in spread from the East Coast to the West Coast.

The book is a surprising pleasure to read and I got through it much more quickly than most non-fiction books, especially ones published by university presses. The most technical sections are only occasionally dense but still quite navigable for someone who hasn't taken a biology class since high school. While I'm acquiring a hard copy for my collection, I found it helpful to read the e-book version so I could easily remind myself every so often what words like "iatrogenic" mean.

Can't recommend this highly enough.