The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in 2008 created The John-Manuel Andriote Victory Deferred Collection. It includes the interview tapes, transcripts, manuscript drafts and other materials used in writing Victory Deferred.
“THE MOST IMPORTANT AIDS CHRONICLE SINCE RANDY SHILTS’ AND THE BAND PLAYED ON”
— KIRKUS REVIEWS
WINNER, Lambda Literary Awards “Editors’ Choice”
HONORED BOOK, American Library Association
FINALIST, New York Stonewall Book Awards
Victory Deferred, the most comprehensive account of the epidemic in the United States through the late 1990s, is the history of both the destruction and transformation wrought by AIDS.
John-Manuel Andriote chronicles the impact of the disease from the coming-out revelry of the 1970s to the post-AIDS gay community of the 1990s, showing how it changed both individual lives and national organizations.
He tells the truly remarkable story of how a health crisis pushed a disjointed jumble of local activists to become a nationally visible and politically powerful civil rights movement, a full-fledged minority group challenging the authority of some of the nation's most powerful institutions.
Victory Deferred draws on hundreds of original interviews, including first-hand accounts from: Virginia Apuzzo, Reverend Carl Bean, Marcus Conant, M.D., John D'Emilio, Anthony Fauci, M.D, Fenton Johnson, Larry Kramer, Lawrence D. Mass, M.D., Armistead Maupin, Walt Odets, Torie Osborn, Eric Rofes, Urvashi Vaid, Timothy Westmoreland, and Reggie Williams.
VICTORY DEFERRED
THE WASHINGTON POST: "Andriote has interviewed every major player during his nearly two decades of reporting on [AIDS] as a journalist, and it shows."
LOS ANGELES TIMES: "People who want to know how a community mobilized in the face of an unprecedented crisis will want to start here."
THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE: "A fine history of the epidemic . . . keen and thoughtful. Andriote shines with chapters on less-covered but no less important subjects, including the multibillion-dollar 'AIDS industry' and private fund-raising groups. He brings together in one place many facts and figures heretofore unsynthesized."
MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE: "While many books have explored aspects of the impact of AIDS, Victory Deferred is among the most comprehensive. Andriote's adroit integration of the personal and the historical results is an illustrative, analytical account of the disease and its impact on the gay civil-rights movement. His depiction of the poignant struggles, heroic responses and resultant social and political gains emanating from AIDS is a perceptive document for our time--relevant to all readers, regardless of their sexual orientation."
THE WASHINGTON BLADE: "Andriote has honored his mentors, his muses and his community by preserving an important chapter in gay cultural history."
OASIS MAGAZINE: "Remarkable . . . Medical writing for the non-professional is tough, and here the blend of biomedical and sociological information is truly consummate. . . . Victory Deferred is everything it has been claimed to be."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY: "[A] well-researched and nuanced portrait of the many lives on which this grave disease has wrought both destruction and transformation."
LIBRARY JOURNAL: "Andriote combines broad strokes and telling details in this engaging history of the complicated war against both disease and bigotry."
"This is an impressive piece of journalism, likely to supplant Randy Shilts's successful And the Band Played On. Like Shilts, Andriote has his prejudices and his favorites, but he is more balanced and less prone to assume he knows exactly what people were feeling and thinking at crucial moments."
— DENNIS ALTMAN, author of AIDS in the Mind of America, in The Age (Australia)
Click on the book cover to read excerpts.