A few weeks ago, a contractor was doing some work in my house, and he asked what I was reading. I told him it was Anthony Fauci’s new book, On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service. He tilted his head and smirked. “Oh, so it’s fiction.” (To be fair, I wouldn’t mention this book to some of my family members, either, knowing I’d get back more than snark.)

For those of us who believe attention to and investment in public health is a crucial element of a thriving community, it’s truly painful to know that a man who, for half a century, has been the face of our government’s fight against infectious disease has been made — for roughly half the U.S. population — into a punchline at best and the object of death threats at worst.

It is an egregiously unfair outcome for a man who has ably shepherded us through some of our most trying times: AIDS, SARS, an influenza pandemic, anthrax, weaponized smallpox, Ebola, Zika, and, of course, covid-19. There is no longer-tenured, public-facing government official than Fauci; we’ve known him since the early 1980s. As head of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Fauci has worked with every administration — and directly with every president — from Reagan to Biden, and he was respected and heeded by all but one.

Born on Christmas Eve 1940 in Brooklyn to first-generation Italian Americans, Fauci had a squarely working-class upbringing, attending Catholic schools, including the prestigious Jesuit-led Regis High School. Young Anthony played basketball — very seriously in his teens, until his height never topped 5’7” — and baseball, which may surprise anyone who saw that ceremonial first pitch at the Nationals game.

He had a pharmacist father, a homemaker mother, and an older sister, Denise. “Everything that Denise and I witnessed in our formative years was geared toward the concept of consideration for and taking care of others,” he writes. “Our father taught us early in life that because we were fortunate, it was our responsibility to help people when we could and making money should not be a primary goal in life.” At the Fauci Pharmacy, many customers kept long-running tabs.

During summers in college, Fauci worked construction jobs as “a card-carrying member of one of the New York local branches of the International Hod Carriers’, Building, and Common Laborers’ Union of America.” One year, he helped build a new library at Cornell Medical School, where he would later be a student — and graduate first in his class.

He was in school during the Vietnam War, and it was mandated that male medical students commit to three years in the uniformed services post-graduation. His pick of the U.S. Public Health Service, given his interest in infectious diseases, plus his follow-up selection of assignment to the NIH rather than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would put him on his professional path for the next 50 years.

Sometimes, we realize in retrospect what a bullet we dodged because the right person was in the right job at the right time. Winston Churchill is typically cited as the primary example of this serendipitous confluence, and my take-away is that Fauci is another. Indeed, to read his autobiography is to proceed through the entire worldwide catalog of late-20th-century epidemiology and to realize the extent to which achieving successful treatment of so many emergent infectious diseases is due in large part to the unique combination of skill, temperament, and determination of this one man and his marshalling of a global network of allies.

It’s not simply that, for example, Fauci was one of the very first high-ranking health officials to recognize the looming AIDS crisis and to push against strong headwinds to get appropriate funding to investigate, isolate, and treat the disease. It’s that he never took personally the activist community’s choice to excoriate him as the face of the government’s response — inadequate, in their estimation — even as he was often the lone official fighting on their behalf. He understood their frustration and reached out to work with them. Incredibly, he became good friends with several ACT UP activists, including the incendiary Larry Kramer.

Fauci’s behind-the-scenes recounting of medical sleuthing and eureka moments is as engrossing as his accounts of public-health issues being held hostage by politics are enraging. In discussing trying to get funding for Zika prevention, for instance, Fauci notes that Republicans said they’d take money from the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) and funding for Ebola, and also defund Planned Parenthood:

“Only in Washington, D.C. would someone link defunding health insurance, disease prevention, and women’s health programs to pay to protect pregnant women from a disease that might severely damage their unborn babies.”

Fauci remains carefully in his lane, making no comment about, say, Scooter Libby or Stephen Miller unless it’s related to his work at NIAID. He doesn’t even dish that much on the agonizing frustrations of the Trump covid response. (Nor does he need to; it played out in front of TV cameras.) It’s clear he has great affection for George W. Bush, the president with whom he worked most closely. Fauci has a habit of establishing deep and lasting friendships everywhere he goes, which is part of what made him so effective.

In an anecdote thick with irony, Fauci recounts a 2022 gathering in his honor at his undergrad alma mater. He enters the crowded room and discovers he’s the only person wearing a mask. He makes a quick decision to remove it. The outcome? He contracts covid and ends up missing his daughter’s wedding.

Science over peer pressure, folks. Please.

Jennifer Bort Yacovissi’s debut novel, Up the Hill to Home, tells the story of four generations of a family in Washington, DC, from the Civil War to the Great Depression. Her short fiction has appeared in Gargoyle and Pen-in-Hand. Jenny reviews regularly for the Independent and serves on its board of directors as president. She has served as chair or program director of the Washington Writers Conference since 2017, and for several recent years was president of the Annapolis chapter of the Maryland Writers’ Association. Stop by Jenny’s website for a collection of her reviews and columns, and follow her on Twitter/X at @jbyacovissi.

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