the emperor's malady biography of cancer

Riveting, urgent, and surprising, this is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.

From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered on through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease. The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist.

In this groundbreaking and award-winning account Siddhartha Mukherjee tells the fascinating story of our relationship. Now, as cancer becomes an ever more universal experience, the need to understand it, and its treatment, has never been more compelling. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers. The Emperor of All Maladies Kindle Edition. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception.

The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with-and perished from-for more than 5000 years. 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 Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer-from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist.

The emperor's malady biography of cancer