In 1993, the Reverend Billy Graham asked an audience rhetorically, “Is AIDS a judgment of God?” He then answered his own question: “I could not say for sure, but I think so.”

Graham later apologized for suggesting that the Almighty had unleashed the epidemic to punish homosexuals. Yet, the fact that an influential and popular pastor echoed views, however hesitantly, of harder-line clerics reflected the perception of many Christians, Professor of Religion Anthony Petro writes at the outset of After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion (Oxford University Press, 2015). The book revisits the history of the disease in the United States and religious reactions to it.

Petro says After the Wrath goes beyond most such accounts, which focus on the religious right’s reaction, to include mainstream and progressive denominations’ handling of the crisis. What began as a public health issue, he writes, became a pan-denominational discussion of morality and sexuality.

Petro faults even gay writers and activists for fostering notions that promiscuity was to blame for the disease.

Composing Cities

In Lost Cities Go to Paradise/Las Ciudades Perdidas Van al Paraíso (Swan Isle Press, 2015), author and poet Alicia Borinsky glides between verse and prose to tell short stories of urban life. Lost Cities, which is presented in Spanish with an English translation, is billed as capturing “the indignities and excitement of living among others in a society and discovering what is valued—and all that is not.” Borinsky, a professor of Spanish and of Latin American & Comparative Literature, also provided illustrations for the collection. On each page, there’s a new poem, song, or story. Most are brief, conversational glimpses: many barely reach halfway down the page; some are two or three succinct lines. Throughout, Borinsky draws her characters—drug-dealing bikers, amorous bakers, pizza-eating teens, poker-playing husbands—with humor, invective, and emotion.