This comprehensive introduction to the problem of AIDS lays out the medical facts and social epidemiology of the disease and illuminates the complex social problems this disease poses for the United States and other nations. Each chapter introduces a key sociological approach that clarifies how social scientists understand and explain important social dimensions of the AIDS epidemic. The authors use of historical comparisons with other deadly epidemics sets in relief the social problems presented by AIDS today. AIDS has become the most vexing medical crisis of our time. But the social aspects of the epidemic are just as complex as the biomedical aspects of the disease, sharing sociological characteristics with the Black Death, cholera, and other devastating epidemics of earlier eras. This comprehensive introduction to the problem of AIDS lays out the medical facts and social epidemiology of the disease and illuminates the complex social problems this disease poses for the United States and other nations. Each chapter introduces a key sociological approach that clarifies how social scientists understand and explain important social dimensions of the AIDS epidemic. The authors use of historical comparisons with other deadly epidemics sets in relief the social problems presented by AIDS today.