Bloor is a leading medical sociologist. He is the director of the Social Research Unit in the School of Social and Administrative Studies, University of Wales. In this volume, Bloor offers an overview ofour currentunderstanding of the social conditions andcontexts of the spread of the HIV infection. Bloor has examined the social epidemiology of HIV transmission in the developing and the developed economies. He has specifically explored the social relations underpinning the heterosexual and homosexual transmission. Bloor has also looked at the issues of sex tourism, prostitution, injecting drug users, hemophiliacs, and transfusion recipients. He discusses the different models of risk behavior and considers their implications for disease prevention. Bloor aims to be synoptic inhisapproach tostudyingriskbehavior rather thanbeing comprehensive in both the developed and the developing world. In the introduction, he maps out the different means of transmitting HIV/AIDS. In the first two chapters, Bloor is concerned largely with the social epidemiology in the developing and the developed worlds. Bloor discusses the fact that different patternsofHIV/AIDSmaybeunderstoodasaconsequenceof local differences in the time period of the epidemic and as a consequence of biological factors and also shaped by differences in risk behavior. InChapters4 and 5, hecritiques the‘‘core-grouphypothesis,’’ which is the epidemiological explanation of the rapid heterosexual transmission of HIV/AIDS in African and Asian countries. He rather emphasizes on the nature of sexual relationships, syringe sharing relationships, and other situational factors in understanding the differences in risk behavior. Risk behavior is associated with intimacy and trust and with strategic power relations. In the conclusion, he attempts at a summary of the current sociological knowledge of the pandemic. He says that ‘‘there is nothing as practical as a good theory’’as this book has implications for disease prevention. In the introduction, Bloor discusses the strange asymmetry with which we are afflicted through health education messages which educate us about our vulnerability to the disease but not our propensity to infect others. The book aims to contest those myths by providing an overview of the contemporary knowledge of the sociology of HIV transmission. Bloor discusses the ‘‘revenge infection’’myth, which include the‘‘Welcome to the AIDS clubs,’’ the story of Birmingham hemophiliacs, and the Air Canada steward—the so-called Patient Zero. He elaborates that the research evidence suggests that those who know themselves to be infected were more likely to reduce their risk behavior than increase it.But sometimesone’sHIVstatus isunknown. In spite of this, the ‘‘revenge myth’’ that people knowingly transmit people HIV/AIDS predominates. I find this particular aspect of this book interesting as Bloor questions the popular imagination. These myths may be playing a role in perpetuating stigma and stereotypes of people living with HIV/AIDS. Bloor further points to the fact that safer sexual practices by female prostituteshassloweddowntheHIV/AIDSpandemic in thedeveloped economies and also the self-help initiatives and cultural changes within the gay community have been instrumental in changing the sexual behavior of the gay community, and the injecting drug users have experienced a reduction in the risk behavior. In Chapter 2, he says that the statistics on HIV/AIDS are discursive practices which promote homophobia or xenophobia in thenameofsocialhygiene, toadvancethesectionalclaimsofoccupational groups (counsellors, drug outreach workers, health educators, social researchers) and to argue for changes in‘‘resource allocation.’’He draws a distinction between the epidemic in the developed and the developing world. In the developed world, it K. Nakray (&) Flat 6, 9 Malone Road, Belfast BT9 6RT, Northern Ireland e-mail: knakray01@Queens-Belfast.ac.uk