Strike Up the Band

Shilts’s editor at St. Martin’s Press, Michael Denneny, said there was never any question that Shilts would write a second book and that it would be about HIV and AIDS. As a result, all of Shilts’s work researching and writing on the issue for his daily news stories in the Chronicle formed valuable research and background material. Denneny recalls: “We knew that was going to be his next book, but this was at the very beginning, and we did not know when the ‘event’ would resolve itself.… I cannot remember when Randy decided that he should do that, but it