With equal parts eloquence and urgency, common sense and patriotism, Kramer writes a concise history of AIDS and despairs that gays have become a tragic people: A lack of civic and political involvement even when faced with an increasingly powerful and hateful opposition. A sexual abandon so reckless that "we are murdering each other." A growing addiction to crystal-meth that defies logic. But Kramer offers gays a survival plan: "So many of Larry Kramer's messages to the younger generation are humanist messages, so old-fashioned in a callow age that we need Kramer to make them again," writes Naomi Wolf in her foreword. "Honor your dead. Take responsibility for yourselves. Grow up. Your lives have meaning — don't fuck and drug them away."