The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, adapted as a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is "an extraordinary achievement" (The New Yorker)--a magnificent, profoundly humane "biography" of cancer. Now updated with three chapters illuminating the new preventions, treatments, and understanding of cancer in the years since the book's first publication. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist's precision, a historian's perspective, and a biographer's passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with--and perished from--for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out "war against cancer." The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.
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Community Reviews
It was OK, but I probably should have listened to the abridged version. I had hoped it would transcend its subject matter, and it does for brief moments. But the author obviously wanted to stick to what he knows, which is oncology. That's an admirable impulse, really, but in this case it didn't make for the most compelling read.
This took me 7 months to read. It was much more scientific than I expected but I learned so much about the origins of cancer, the history of a search for a cure, and the challenges faced by the scientists, physicians, patients, and activists. Glad I stuck with it.
“In God we trust. All others [must] have data." - Bernard Fisher
From the first recorded case in ancient Egypt 4,600 years ago to becoming the 2nd most cause of death in the United States, Mukherjee sketches a biography of cancer through history, through the trials and errors and hubris of medicine, through the innovations of the Industrial Revolution and the chemical mutants of the World Wars, through meticulous epidemiology and clinical trials of the 20th century, through the personal and moving stories across centuries of cancer patients, through cancer as poetry, as metaphor, as real and as human as our cells and ourselves.
My favorite conversations throughout this book kept circling back to the ethical questions that emerged with the growing anatomy of cancer cases, research, treatment options, and of course, the associated costs of it all. What responsibility do corporations have to protect workers from carcinogenic exposure? When does it become unethical to deny a promising experimental treatment? What responsibility do cigarette companies have for selling and promoting a highly addictive, known carcinogen? How much and what kinds of care should health insurance cover? When does aggressive treatment shift to palliative care? Contemporary versions of these questions exist in our sphere of debates today around opioid use, climate change, and gun control.
Mukherjee's voice is his own, both deeply personal and highly trained oncologist. I appreciate that this book is technical enough to interest scientists and medical practitioners, yet written sincerely and naturally enough to captivate a lay audience as well. And despite the great dearth of our knowledge and understanding of the myriad illnesses we collectively call "cancer" there is an underlying optimism in Mukherjee's writing, with pretty convincing arguments to back up his opinions.
Suffice it to say, I loved this book. I can easily see why TIME magazine named it as one of the 100 most influential books of the last 100 years. And you will, too.
From the first recorded case in ancient Egypt 4,600 years ago to becoming the 2nd most cause of death in the United States, Mukherjee sketches a biography of cancer through history, through the trials and errors and hubris of medicine, through the innovations of the Industrial Revolution and the chemical mutants of the World Wars, through meticulous epidemiology and clinical trials of the 20th century, through the personal and moving stories across centuries of cancer patients, through cancer as poetry, as metaphor, as real and as human as our cells and ourselves.
My favorite conversations throughout this book kept circling back to the ethical questions that emerged with the growing anatomy of cancer cases, research, treatment options, and of course, the associated costs of it all. What responsibility do corporations have to protect workers from carcinogenic exposure? When does it become unethical to deny a promising experimental treatment? What responsibility do cigarette companies have for selling and promoting a highly addictive, known carcinogen? How much and what kinds of care should health insurance cover? When does aggressive treatment shift to palliative care? Contemporary versions of these questions exist in our sphere of debates today around opioid use, climate change, and gun control.
Mukherjee's voice is his own, both deeply personal and highly trained oncologist. I appreciate that this book is technical enough to interest scientists and medical practitioners, yet written sincerely and naturally enough to captivate a lay audience as well. And despite the great dearth of our knowledge and understanding of the myriad illnesses we collectively call "cancer" there is an underlying optimism in Mukherjee's writing, with pretty convincing arguments to back up his opinions.
Suffice it to say, I loved this book. I can easily see why TIME magazine named it as one of the 100 most influential books of the last 100 years. And you will, too.
This book is amazing. It's informative: even with all I know about cancer (unfortunately) I still learned so much. It's interesting: I was eager to go back to this long book and learn more about the disease and the people who changed the landscape of the battle against cancer. I was afraid to read it because I thought I would find it horribly depressing (especially after reading Being Mortal by Atul Gawande) but it wasn't. It was hopeful in a practical realistic way, explaining what is being done currently all that remains to be done.
My only critique is that the book rambled on at the end quite a bit. It should have had a shorter tighter ending. The ending seems to have dragged on from Chapters 46-49, and an epilogue.
My only critique is that the book rambled on at the end quite a bit. It should have had a shorter tighter ending. The ending seems to have dragged on from Chapters 46-49, and an epilogue.
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