Reports from the Holocaust: The Making of an AIDS Activist

In his strong title piece, ``Report from the Holocaust,'' novelist/playwright Kramer ( The Normal Heart , Faggots ) tells what it's like to be a gay male during the AIDS epidemic, watching one friend die after another. That sense of dire urgency informs the outspoken, at times controversial articles, essays, open letters and speeches in this compendium. Kramer is sharply critical of the Reagan administration, the National Institutes of Health and the FDA, all of which he accuses of bureaucratic inertia in coping with the AIDS crisis. He also lambasts New York mayor Ed Koch, whom he charges with ignoring the pandemic. In other pieces he wages a running battle with the Gay Men's Health Crisis, which he co-founded but from which he was ``brutally exiled.'' The selections date from 1978 to the present; all are topical and timely, though the pieces written in self-defense, reflecting infighting in the gay community, grow tiresome. Author tour. (Feb.)