Let the Record Show

December 1, 2020

To write King Richard, a chronicle of the Watergate conspiracy, veteran Washington Post reporter Dobbs (One Minute to Midnight) drew on thousands of hours of newly released taped recordings. New York Times best-selling author of The Secret Game, Ellsworth heads back to his hometown in The Ground Breaking to report on the reopened investigation into the Tulsa Race Massacre and reckon with its consequences. Guinn's War on the Border recounts Pancho Villa's blood-soaked raid on a small U.S. border town and Gen. John J. Pershing's Punitive Expedition, a retaliatory gesture (75,000-copy first printing). From Schulman, Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the College of Staten Island and codirector of the ACT UP Oral History Project, Let the Record Show is a two-decades-in-the-making history of ACT UP's AIDSs advocacy. New York Times best-selling author White examines the 16th president's personal notes and jottings to show us Lincoln in Private.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2021
ACT UP is a grassroots political organization formed in New York City in 1987 that sought to end the AIDS pandemic and help improve the lives of those suffering with the disease. Schulman, who worked as a part of ACT UP herself, interviewed 188 people who were a part of the organization to create this extensive resource. Rather than attempting to present a chronological history of ACT UP, Schulman organizes the book into sections based on specific moments, like working with the CDC, and themes, such as the leadership within the organization, and presents the relevant interviews with ACT UP volunteers. Schulman presents ACT UP not as a heroic, sanitized institution made up of exclusively white gay men, but as what it actually was: an organization that managed to improve the lives of people living with HIV and AIDS despite its own racism and sexism. By doing this, Schulman creates a much more nuanced--and accurate--portrait of the AIDS crisis, highlighting the ways the disease impacted women and people of color.

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Starred review from March 1, 2021
The veteran author, screenwriter, and activist delivers a significant boots-on-the-ground account of the New York City chapter of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. Though divisive, ACT UP's in-your-face activism unquestionably improved life for subsequent generations of people with AIDS. Many of the volunteers saw themselves as warriors, some fighting for their lives by forcing governmental health institutes to care about them and stop delaying treatments. Founded in 1987 by novelist and playwright Larry Kramer, the New York chapter served as the "mothership" of what eventually became 148 chapters worldwide. The organization's strategy of confrontation was inspired by Kramer's insistence on political agitation born of necessity. Days before ACT UP was formed he notoriously told a crowd, "In five years, half of you will be dead!" ACT UP's "boldest act of broad leadership" was the Stop the Church campaign, waged on Dec. 10, 1989, with WHAM! (Women's Health Action and Mobilization). In a "raw display of power," activists interrupted a Catholic service at St. Patrick's Cathedral, garnering heaps of both positive and negative media coverage. "Nothing could have been more counter to assimilationist or respectability politics than Stop the Church," writes Schulman, who was a rank-and-file ACT UP volunteer. A longtime historian of LGBTQ+ activism, the author takes to task other histories of AIDS, including David France's documentary film How To Survive a Plague (2012), which focuses on the "heroic white male." Schulman clearly demonstrates that ACT UP was founded in part to engender a relentlessly democratic and inclusive force of activism. That ideology explains the heft of this book, which isn't written as traditional history but as a mashup of events witnessed by Schulman and oral history that's truly all-encompassing. Readers are right there with activists, hearing their stories from them but also others who knew them. "Drive and commitment, invention and felicity, a focus on campaigns, and being effective are the components of movements that change the world," writes Schulman, an assertion born out in the stories told here. Vital, democratic truth-telling.

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Starred review from April 1, 2021

Few activist organizations of the late 20th century have had the impact of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. Novelist and playwright Schulman was herself intimately involved in the group, and has written a deeply personal account of its heady years. ACT UP's New York chapter is the mother chapter of 148 groups worldwide; Schulman says it was the site of incredible creativity, research, and leadership. She states that she is not a trained historian, but her skilled use of oral histories, combined with solid research into earlier social movements, provide a complete history of ACT UP, from its founding in 1987 to the present day. The writing is given a personal touch with the inclusion of profiles and oral histories of notable people, such as chemist Iris Long and HIV/AIDS researcher Mark Harrington. These portraits, together with the historical context offered throughout, prove the lasting influence of ACT UP and have a lot to teach readers about activism today. Schulman reminds us that ACT UP still exists because the HIV/AIDS crisis is not over. VERDICT This engaging, accessible book will find a wide audience among readers interested in activism from the ground up. It will also be a foundational document for historians for generations to come. A must-read.--David Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Libs., Philadelphia

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.