An account of both the medical search for a cure for AIDS and the epidemic's effect on society, The Plague Years reaches beyond the traditional boundaries of the best investigative journalism to become an exhaustive and profoundly relevant chronicle of a health crisis whose potential to alter society's psyche is perhaps almost as great as its power to affect the physiology of its citizens.

Charting the epidemic from discovery to the current crisis, David Black vividly pinpoints the perspective of all who play roles in this tragedy as he relates dramatic efforts to cure and cope with AIDS. A superb spokesman for international fear and paranoia of AIDS, he freely admits sharing the phobias by which we dismiss calamities which happen to groups perceived 'outside the mainstream of society'. With compassion and tolerance, he has learned to confront his own 'criminal negligence': his courage, energy and commitment provide a much-needed beacon to illuminate that other, creeping black death, of ignorance and prejudice.