The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

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From cancer's earliest recorded appearances thousands of years ago to the epic struggles of the twentieth century to cure, control, and vanquish it to a startling new understanding of its core, The Emperor of All Maladies is a brilliant and deeply humanistic "biography" of cancer.

Siddhartha Mukherjee is a scientist, physician, and award-winning scientific writer who approaches cancer with the accuracy of a cellular biologist, the viewpoint of a historian, and the passion of a biography. The end product is a startlingly clear and poetic account of a sickness that has plagued and killed mankind for almost 5,000 years.

In addition to human inventiveness, resilience, and tenacity, the narrative of cancer also includes hubris, paternalism, and misinformation. Through the eyes of his forebears and colleagues, Mukherjee narrates centuries of discoveries, disappointments, successes, and deaths. They are honing their cunning against a very tenacious enemy that was believed to be easily defeated in an all-out "war against cancer" only thirty years ago.

With cancer as the main character, the novel reads like a literary thriller. The Emperor of All Maladies is a book about people who have braved extremely difficult treatment plans in order to survive—from the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave amputated her cancerous breast, to the patients of Mukherjee's own leukemia, Carla, who received treatment in the nineteenth century—and to broaden our knowledge of this renowned illness.

The Emperor of All Maladies is a gripping, urgent, and unexpected look at the cutting edge of cancer therapies. It's an insightful book that gives those trying to understand cancer hope and clarity.