Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • How to Survive a Plague

  • The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS
  • By: David France
  • Narrated by: Rory O'Malley
  • Length: 24 hrs and 28 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (90 ratings)

$0.00 for first 30 days

Try for £0.00
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
How to Survive a Plague cover art

How to Survive a Plague

By: David France
Narrated by: Rory O'Malley
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
activate_primeday_promo_in_buybox_DT

Listeners also enjoyed...

 And the Band Played On cover art
Love from the Pink Palace cover art
Living and Loving in the Age of AIDS cover art
Jonas Salk cover art
Hold Tight Gently cover art
Let the Record Show cover art
Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic cover art
Never Silent cover art
The T in LGBT cover art
Angels in America cover art
Epic Measures cover art
We Can Be Heroes cover art
The Mayor of Castro Street cover art
The Girl They Left Behind cover art
We Hope for Better Things cover art
Broken Angels cover art

Summary

Winner of The Green Carnation Prize for LGBTQ literature
Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT nonfiction
Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2017

How to Survive a Plague by David France is the riveting, powerful and profoundly moving story of the AIDS epidemic and the grass-roots movement of activists, many of them facing their own life-or-death struggles, who grabbed the reins of scientific research to help develop the drugs that turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable disease. Around the globe, the 15.8 million people taking anti-AIDS drugs today are alive thanks to their efforts.

Not since the publication of Randy Shilts's now classic And the Band Played On in 1987 has a book sought to measure the AIDS plague in such brutally human, intimate, and soaring terms.

Weaving together the stories of dozens of individuals, this is an insider's account of a pivotal moment in our history and one that changed the way that medical science is practised worldwide.

©2017 David France (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: LGBTQ+
Gay Studies History & Commentary Physical Illness & Disease 20th Century
Show More Show Less

Critic reviews

Important and powerfully written . . . Instead of diluting the emotional force of his narrative, France’s personal perspective on the story amplifies it, particularly because his meticulously chronicled version of events is never clouded by sentimentality or petty score-settling . . . How to Survive a Plague stands on its own as a more richly nuanced telling of a chain of events that forever changed medicine . . . Inspiring, uplifting and necessary reading. (Steve Silberman author of Neurotribes)
A remarkable book about a remarkable achievement: how an unlikely alliance of US activists, patients, doctors and scientists tamed one of the greatest threats to public health in the past 100 years, saving millions of lives. (Peter Tatchell)
How to Survive a Plague is epoch-making: the whole social and scientific history of AIDS, brilliantly told. Informative, entertaining, suspenseful, moving, and personal. (Edmund White)
Heroic and heartbreaking and magnificent history throughout, How to Survive a Plague is one of the great tales of our time: the story of incredibly brave and determined men and women who defied government, the pharmaceutical industry, vicious homophobia, and the death sentence of AIDS to overwhelm an awful scourge. (Carl Bernstein)
As one generation grows up with the misconception that AIDS is nothing more than a manageable illness, another grows old with the fear that the epidemic's early days will disappear into the fog of history. How to Survive a Plague is the book for both generations. France has pulled off the seemingly impossible here, invoking the terror and confusion of those dark times while simultaneously providing a clear-eyed timeline of the epidemic's emergence and the disparate, often dissonant forces that emerged to fight it. (Dale Peck)
Riveting account of the effort by citizens and scientists alike to combat AIDS in its devastating early years. France moved to New York fresh out of college, in 1981, and he focusses on the city, where nearly half of the gay population was infected with H.I.V. before the virus was discovered. Threaded with poignant personal recollection, his history is formidable in scope and profoundly humane. It’s also a study in the power of protest and civil disobedience, bound to be useful in the days ahead (Alexandra Schwartz)

What listeners say about How to Survive a Plague

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    69
  • 4 Stars
    18
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    57
  • 4 Stars
    15
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    59
  • 4 Stars
    13
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.co.uk reviews

Amazon reviews
Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for Ellie Moore

A piece of history that needs to be shared

Finding myself listening to this felt very timely given current circumstances, but I can truly say the compassionate, brutal honesty France shares in this book should be shared with more people.
O'Malley narrates the book well, keeping pace consistent and giving every section the tone befitting its contents.
A long listen but one very worth the time. Eye-opening to a piece of history I knew very little about, if I retain even a fraction of the information in this book, my knowledge about the HIV/AIDS epidemic will be better than anything taught to me at school in recent years. Only 30 years since some of these events and so much is being forgotten.

Report this

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for Angus Fraser

Fascinating and tragic

The book was fascinating, but also, unsurprisingly, depressing both in terms of what these people went through and just how relevant the treatment of these people is today.

Report this

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for Ian Fallon

This is essential listening.

There were many moments throughout listening to this book that I had to stop and cry either out of anger, sadness, hope, joy or pride. David France's first hand experience and access to key figures throught his research for this book made me feel like I was living the story today whether I liked it or not.

Report this

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful