Sullivan subtitles this book Notes on Friendship, Sex and Survival. Survival in the sense that the drug cocktails that became prevalent in the second half of the 90s were rendering what had previously been considered a death sentence into a life with a future, albeit a future of medical treatment. Sex in the sense that his first book, Virtually Normal, sidestepped: that is, where does homosexuality come from, and what is a society to do with homosexuals? And Friendship in the sense that society marginalizes this most casual, natural of relationships in favor of family or an idealized, romantic love. Throughout the book, Sullivan approaches his topics with a more personal but no less scholarly or thoughtful approach than he exhibits in his previous book or in his Daily Dish blog at the Atlantic. ( )