Book: Biography of Cancer

[Erudite]

Title: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of CancerAuthor: Siddartha Mukherjee
Pages: 679 (though the last 150 are notes and whatnot)
Genre: Non-fiction

Fascinating and fantastic! This book is both about the biography of cancer AND of cancer treatment. You'd think such a book would be depressing, and in some ways it certainly is stark, but I didn't find it at all depressing. The author is an oncologist who discusses what he's learned from his patients, both living and dead, to create an interesting and well-written narrative that traces our knowledge of cancer from the BC to this new millenium. He covers the ground in a very readable way, despite it being a highly scientific (and therefore filled with scientific words that aren't in the vocabularies of most of us) topic. He defines words in an understandable way and then uses them in contexts that continue to contribute to understanding the words so that by the end of the book I can clearly understand "endogeneous" and "adjuvant" and "suppuration" without needing to look up the word again. Thus I was able to learn a whole lot about the whole cancer life and death through reading this book.

I can fully recommend this book to anyone, though it's more likely to be enjoyed by a fairly well educated adult. This book is especially important for those who may have a family history of cancer of any kind, because it explains how that works and why.

The book offers no proactive pre-therapies, like eating more fruits and vegetables, as it deals with cancer after it is on its way in the body, and doesn't discuss homeopathic type cures of any kind. But understanding how "western" medicine might treat cancer would be a huge boon to anyone looking the possibility of the disease. And...according to the latest Discovery magazine, 1 in 7 of us will be forced to gain a better understanding of the disease in our lifetime, so I recommend it to all.