Hold Tight Gently

In December 1995, the FDA approved the release of protease inhibitors, the first effective treatment for AIDS. For countless people, the drug offered a reprieve from what had been a death sentence; for others, it was too late. In the United States alone, over 318,000 people had already died from AIDS-related complicationsamong them the singer Michael Callen and the poet Essex Hemphill. Meticulously researched and evocatively told, Hold Tight Gently is the celebrated historian Martin Duberman’s p