Never Silent, Peter Staley
Never Silent, Peter Staley
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Never Silent
ACT UP and My Life in Activism

Author: Peter Staley

Narrator: Peter Staley

Unabridged: 10 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/09/2021


Synopsis

In 1987, somebody shoved a flyer into the hand of Peter Staley: massive AIDS demonstration, it announced. After four years on Wall Street as a closeted gay man, Staley was familiar with the homophobia common on trading floors. He also knew that he was not beyond the reach of HIV, having recently been diagnosed with AIDS-Related Complex.

A week after the protest, Staley found his way to a packed meeting of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power—ACT UP—in the West Village. It would prove to be the best decision he ever made. ACT UP would change the course of AIDS, pressuring the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and three administrations to finally respond with research that ultimately saved millions of lives.

Staley, a shrewd strategist with nerves of steel, organized some of the group's most spectacular actions, from shutting down trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to putting a giant condom over the house of Senator Jesse Helms. Never Silent is the inside story of what brought Staley to ACT UP and the explosive and sometimes painful years to follow—years filled with triumph, humiliation, joy, loss, and persistence.

About Peter Staley

Peter Staley is one of the leading AIDS and LGBTQ rights activists of his generation, playing a critical role in some of ACT UP's best-known actions, and then cofounding TAG and PrEP4All. Today Staley speaks to audiences worldwide on grassroots activism, and is the lead plaintiff against multiple pharmaceutical companies for anticompetitive practices in Staley v. Gilead.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill

A lot of great stories, of course. Peter Staley is often clear-eyed and self-critical. I have even more respect for him after reading this. I'm surprised this didn't appear under a bigger publisher. For such a visually distinctive group, I'd have liked to see more photos. (And some of the reproductio......more

Goodreads review by Nev

I’d heard about Peter Staley’s activism before in both the documentary and book titled How to Survive a Plague. It was amazing to hear his perspective on being a part of AIDS activism in the 80s and 90s with ACT UP and later on with different organizations. Even though I was familiar with a lot of t......more

This book made me cry, it made me laugh, and it overwhelmed me with a unbeatable sense of community. In this memoir, Peter Staley brings us through his life of activism, loss, and all the trials and tribulations that came with being a gay man diagnosed with AIDS-related complex in the 1980s. Which wa......more

Goodreads review by James

Solidly written memoir. Too busy to read How to Survive a Plague? Read this instead; covers a lot of the same ground, but with less medical knowledge required. No, seriously, though, try to read both. This book just reads really fast. I enjoyed the chapter about Dallas Buyers Club and was gobsmacked......more