Tuesday, August 2 at 6:00 pm in the Marc Jacobs Reading Room

Join author Sarah Schulman as she shares her new book Let the Record Show in the Library’s Marc Jacobs Reading Room on Tuesday, August 2 at 5:00 pm.

Twenty years in the making, Sarah Schulman's Let the Record Show is the most comprehensive political history ever assembled of ACT UP and American AIDS activism. Winner of the 2022 Lambda Literary LGBTQ Nonfiction Award. Finalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbriath Award for Nonfiction, the Gotham Book Prize, and the ALA Stonewall Israel Fishman Nonfiction Award. A 2021 New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Longlisted for the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize.

In just six years, ACT UP, New York, a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world. They transformed the American insurance industry, weaponized art and advertising to push their agenda, and battled—and beat—The New York Times, the Catholic Church, and the pharmaceutical industry. Their activism, in its complex and intersectional power, transformed the lives of people with AIDS and the bigoted society that had abandoned them.

Based on more than two hundred interviews with ACT UP members and rich with lessons for today’s activists, Let the Record Show is a revelatory exploration—and long-overdue reassessment—of the coalition’s inner workings, conflicts, achievements, and ultimate fracture. 

Sarah Schulman is an American novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, gay activist, and AIDS historian. Schulman is the author of 20 books, most recently LET THE RECORD SHOW: A Political History of ACT UP, New York 1987-1993, which was recently released in paperback.