About 675,000 Americans have died of AIDS since the epidemic began in the early 1980s. I knew none of them. This book, [a:Rebecca Makkai|3134707|Rebecca Makkai|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1313468002p2/3134707.jpg]'s fourth, makes me feel like I did.
She did loads of research but it doesn't read like that; I looked up the death number elsewhere. The chapters alternate between the mid 1980s and and early 90s to 2015. The Great Believers has its sad moments (how could it not?) but many of humor and many others of simple understanding and intelligent empathy.
Makkai has the ability good writers have to capture little, telling moments and describe them well, like this one about what a main character does after submitting his resignation and returning to his desk:

Yale opened his top drawer. There were at least fifty ballpoint pens, most inherited with the desk. He took one and squiggled a line on his legal pad. It didn't work at first, but then it did. He put it in the empty mug by his left hand, and then he forgot what he was doing and sat there blinking. Then he remembered and grabbed the next pen and tried it, and it was dead, and he dropped it into the trash can, where it landed too loudly. The next two were dry, the next clotted, the next fine. He went through all the pens. Twelve good ones. Two with Northwestern logos, a few plain Bics, a couple of fancy erasable ones, a few cheap ones advertising insurance companies. At least Yale guessed that was the writing on the sides; he couldn't focus his eyes.