Twenty years in the making, Sarah Schulman’s monumental LET THE RECORD SHOW is the most comprehensive political history ever assembled of ACT UP and American AIDS activism.
LET THE RECORD SHOW:
A Political History of ACT UP, New York, 1987-1993
by Sarah Schulman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, May 2021
(chez Dystel Goderich & Bourret)
In just six years, ACT UP, New York, a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world. Armed with rancor, desperation, intelligence, and creativity, ACT UP, NY took on the AIDS crisis with an infatigable, ingenious, and multifaceted attack on the corporations, institutions, governments, and individuals who stood in the way of AIDS treatment for all. They stormed the FDA and NIH in Washington DC and started Needle Exchange in New York; they took over Grand Central terminal and fought to change the legal definition of AIDS to include women; they transformed the American insurance industry, weaponized art and advertising to push their agenda, and battled—and beat—the New York Times, the Catholic Church, and the pharmaceutical industry. AIDS Activism in its complex and intersectional power, transformed the lives of People With AIDS and the bigoted society that abandoned them.
Based on more than 200 interviews with ACT UP members and rich with lessons for today’s activists, LET THE RECORD SHOW is a revelatory exploration—and long overdue reassessment—of the coalition’s innerworkings, conflicts, achievements, and ultimate fracture. Schulman, one of the most revered queer writers and thinkers of her generation, explores the how and the why, examining, with her characteristic rigor and bite, how a group of desperate outcasts changed America forever, and in the process created a livable future for generations of people across the world.
Sarah Schulman is the author of novels, nonfiction books, plays and movies. Her recent works are Maggie Terry, The Cosmopolitans, which was picked as one of the “Best Books of 2016” by Publishers Weekly, and a nonfiction book, Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility and the Duty of Repair. Previous novels are The Child, Shimmer, Empathy, Rat Bohemia, People in Trouble, After Delores, Girls Visions and Everything, The Mere Future, and The Sophie Horowitz Story. Her nonfiction titles are Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia And Its Consequences, The Gentrification Of The Mind: Witness To A Lost Imagination, Stagestruck: Theater, Aids And The Marketing Of Gay America, Israel/Palestine and The Queer International, and My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life During The Reagan/Bush Years.
A movement that started with a hashtag—#BlackLivesMatter—on Twitter spread across the nation and then across the world. From one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement comes a poetic memoir and reflection on humanity. Necessary and timely, Patrisse Cullors’ story asks us to remember that protest in the interest of the most vulnerable comes from love. Leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement have been called terrorists, a threat to America. But in truth, they are loving women whose life experiences have led them to seek justice for those victimized by the powerful. Now, the New York Times bestseller is adapted for the YA audience with new material and reader questions plus photos, journal notes, lyrics, doodles, and more!
When COVID-19 besieged the United States, New York State emerged as the global “ground zero” for a deadly contagion that threatened the lives and livelihoods of millions. Quickly, Governor Andrew Cuomo provided the leadership to address the threat, becoming the standard-bearer of the organized response the country desperately needed. With infection rates spiking and more people dying every day, the systems and functions necessary to combat the pandemic in New York—and America—did not exist. So Cuomo undertook the impossible. He unified people to rise to the challenge and was relentless in his pursuit of scientific facts and data. He quelled fear while implementing an extraordinary plan for flattening the curve of infection. He and his team worked day and night to protect the people of New York, despite roadblocks presented by a president incapable of leadership and addicted to transactional politics. In his own voice, Andrew Cuomo chronicles the ingenuity and sacrifice required of so many to fight the pandemic, sharing the decision-making that shaped his policy as well as his frank accounting and assessment of his interactions with the federal government, the White House, and other state and local political and health officials. Real leadership, he shows, requires clear communication, compassion for others, and a commitment to truth-telling—no matter how frightening the facts may be. A remarkable portrait of selfless leadership and a gritty story of difficult choices that points the way to a safer future for all of us.
Friday, January 6, 2017: On that day, as always, John Brennan’s alarm clock was set to go off at 4:15 a.m. But nothing else about that day would be routine. That day marked his first and only security briefing with President-elect Donald Trump. And it was also the day John Brennan said his final farewell to Owen Brennan, his father, the man who had taught him the lessons of goodness, integrity, and honor that had shaped the course of an unparalleled career serving his country from within the intelligence community.