"For almost 20 years, the AIDS crisis has dominated all gay male health concerns," says author Daniel Wolfe. "Who could talk about prostate problems or heart disease when so many gay men wouldn’t be living long enough to have those problems? Why discuss good communication when the top priority seemed to be proper use of a condom?"

Wolfe’s recent release of Men Like Us: The GMHC Complete Guide to Gay Men’s Sexual, Physical, and Emotional Well-Being adds a 629 page, 13-chapter cornucopia of tidbits and in-depth information for gay men. The large book format is filled with illustrations, charts, and photography that makes for easy cross-referenced between table of contents and chapter pages.

Drawn from stories of friends and boyfriends, major health struggles and minor bouts of embarrassment, Men like Us is a landmark effort to join the lessons of AIDS to the spirit of a broader gay health movement. Wolfe says, "This book is meant for all of us who are used to reading between the lines to find the homosexuality, or have spent too long searching other health guides and encyclopedias for definitions and descriptions of our lives."

Emphasis on gay men’s health issues has taken a high profile in the past year with formation of the Gay Men’s Health Summit held last year for the first time in Boulder, CO and scheduled to be held there again July 19 – 23 (bcap.org for more information). Upwards of 500 activists, writers, and health professionals, about twice as many as last year, are headed for Boulder to organize gay men’s health summits in nearly 15 cities across the nation for 2001. "It’s a badly needed gay counterpart to the countless magazine articles, television shoes, and books that teach heterosexual America to hook up, stay healthy, find happiness, and live to tell about it," Wolfe notes.

Men Like Us is practical, political, and accessible. It opens a window onto what has always been at the heart of gay pride in the era of the AIDS epidemic — the incredible ways that gay men, in all their diversity, have cared for themselves, and for each other. That spirit of pride now moves now to embrace health and wellness as a route to balance and happiness.