AIDS emerged in the early 1980s as a global health crisis. For gay men in the 1980s, there was no escaping the epidemic. The disease indelibly shaped what it meant to be gay during that decade; it was a time of alarm, confusion and grief. In Notes from an Epidemic, Trevor Green talks to two men who survived the crisis. Writers James Dubro and David G. Hallman recount their rising panic during that painful time, when little was known about the disease, and in the media the virus was called “the gay plague” or “gay cancer.” But the crisis also galvanized and catalyzed the LGBTQ community, as its members formed political and advocacy groups.