In 1978, while recovering from cancer, Susan Sontag wrote Illness as metaphor, the celebrated essay on the invented and often punitive uses of illness in our culture. It was not surprising that a decade later, after the advent of AIDS, Sontag felt compelled to write a sequel that would counter the almost universal labeling of AIDS as a "plague". Published together in one volume these works are brimming with humane and original ideas about disease and the modern condition.