An AIDS epidemic as severe as the one plowing through South Africa will change society. But how and along what lines? Buckling: The impact of AIDS in South Africa, a new publication by South African writer and journalist Hein Marais, tackles the question in distinctive and critical-minded fashion-and arrives at disquieting conclusions. Published by the Centre for the Study of AIDS at the University of Pretoria, and based on a comprehensive review of the published sociological and epidemiological research, this multidisciplinary study scrutinizes commonplace conceptions of AIDS impact, presents a fresh understanding of the epidemic's consequences in South Africa, and proposes a minimum package of social adjustments that could reduce the damage. According to Marais, most projections of how the AIDS epidemic affects society are vastly oversimplified and often are tailored to fit prevailing ideological perspectives. As a result, they fail to capture the ways in the epidemic's burdens are deflected onto, and are concentrated among the least-privileged sections of society, particularly women-causing even harsher polarization. "AIDS unmasks the world we live in and reiterates the need to transform it," Marais writes. Policies and programmatic responses based on conventional conceptions of the societal effects of AIDS are likely to fail, or may even aggravate existing inequities. The Introduction of Buckling positions South Africa's epidemic and its anticipated impact in a wider historical and ideological context. Chapter Two ('Gauging the epidemic') examines the epidemiological evidence and the controversies surrounding it. Chapter Three ('Ground Zero') reviews and critiques the customary narratives of AIDS impact on households, of orphanhood and of home-based care, and shows how the epidemic is accentuating and hardening some of the most grievous features of society. Chapter Four ('Fall-out') pans wider to scan and critique the popularized images of societal impact, offers an alternative analysis of AIDS impact in South Africa, and proposes a minimum social package to reduce the damage. Electronic copies of Buckling: The impact of AIDS in South Africa can be downloaded at http://www.csa.za.org and at http://www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0001789/index.php. Hard copies can be ordered from csa@up.ac.za or by writing to the Centre for the Study of AIDS, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, South Africa. Hein Marais is a South African writer and journalist. He is the author of, among other publications, the book South Africa: Limits to Change-the political economy of transition (Juta/Zed, 2001) and the multidisciplinary review of HIV/AIDS policy in South Africa, To the Edge (2000), co-author of the United Nations' 2002 Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic (2002), and has been the principal author of the annual United Nations' AIDS Epidemic Update for the past five years.