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Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

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  • Synopses & Reviews
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ISBN13: 9781439170915
ISBN10: 1439170916
Condition: Standard


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Awards

2011 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and now a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, 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.

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.

From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave may have cut off her diseased 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 through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive—and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease.

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.

Review

"It’s time to welcome a new star in the constellation of great writer-doctors. With this fat, enthralling, juicy, scholarly, wonderfully written history of cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee vaults into that exalted company, inviting comparisons to ... Lewis Thomas and ... Stephen Jay Gould." Washington Post

Review

“This volume should earn Mukherjee a rightful place alongside Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, and Stephen Hawking in the pantheon of our epoch's great explicators.” Boston Globe

About the Author

Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher. He is the author of The Laws of Medicine and The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. Mukherjee is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and a staff cancer physician at Columbia University Medical Center. A Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford, Harvard Medical School. He has published articles in Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, The New York Times, and The New Republic. He lives in New York with his wife and daughters. 

5 18

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Average customer rating 5 (18 comments)

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Kristina , August 12, 2017 (view all comments by Kristina)
In this beautifully woven work of nonfiction, Mukherjee tells the fascinating story of the history of cancer treatment and research. A fellow in hematology/oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and a former Rhodes Scholar, Mukherjee also incorporates his own experiences as a doctor, giving a poignant voice to the clinical side of cancer and to the human suffering involved. The book contains technical scientific details, but these are described in a way that is clear and understandable to the layperson. It is an informative, interesting, and at times heartbreaking account. Yet, through describing the immense advances that have been made over the centuries in cancer medicine, it is at the same time able to fill the reader with great hope for a future in which cancer will be defeated. An essential book to read, as cancer has in some way touched the lives of nearly all of us. This book has won the Pulitzer Prize, has been listed as one of the 100 most influential books of the last 100 years by TIME, and was selected as a notable book of the year by the New York Times – for good reason!

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cristian.boanca1 , January 30, 2013
The Emperor of All Maladies does an extraordinary job portraying the fickle balance between the horrors of unchecked cell growth and the great promise of modern medicine in its treatment.

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court54 , January 30, 2013
Everyone has had their lives touched by cancer in someway. Whether it's a family member, friend, or friend of a friend, we all have known someone who has battled and won or lost that battle to cancer. This book is an epic overview of the history of research and treatment development of all different types of cancer. While it does get a little technical for those with no previous healthcare experience, the stories and accounts still reach to a personal level. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in knowing how the fight against this disease we have all encountered was begun, developed, and continuing.

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vixcats , January 01, 2013
Fascinating history of the development of treatments for cancer. Extremely well written; even those not in the medical field should find it interesting.

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LieseTrial , January 01, 2013
A very enlightening look at the history of our battle against cancer. It left me with the realization that the better approach is not searching for a cure but, as with all other public health diseases, learning to prevent it!

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toquin , January 01, 2013
Compassionate, eloquent, informative--an example of science writing at its best

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pdxexplore , January 01, 2013
Dr. Mukherjee is a terrific storyteller. In addition to providing excellent historic background on the battle against cancer, he tells awesome stories. He is able to make very complex research accessible and interesting. While being extremely comprehensive from a research perspective, he frequently bring in the humane side of the cancer story. This is a must read!

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Douglas Smith , January 01, 2013
A fascinating history of the research into treatments for cancer. A recurring story of mavericks contradicting the powers that be and conventional wisdom. A pattern that undoubtedly plays out in many areas of scientific research but one that had tremendous consequences for this who were subjected to radical surgeries that, in hindsight, were often misguided, unnecessary, and sometimes catastrophic. Highly recommended.

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James Bond , January 19, 2012
A fascinating, very readable, and ultimately personal biography of a disease that seems to be idiosyncratic and different for every person who is affected by it. I was skeptical that such a book could be so fascinating but it was!

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lindavw , January 09, 2012 (view all comments by lindavw)
This has to be the best non-fiction book of 2011. Mukherjee demonstrates what great writing can be: intriguing and personal, never dry and always accessible. As a medical researcher and physician, he has created a compelling and compassionate work that encompasses all we we have come to know about cancer, from its first discovery in Egypt to our modern day targeted gene therapies. He has included real stories of cancer patients (many of them his own patients) and the dedicated doctors and researchers who race to find the cause and cure of the deadly spectrum of cancer diseases. It is an inspiring work and I believe it will remain as good a read in ten or twenty years as it is today.

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P Sweeney Tacoma , January 04, 2012 (view all comments by P Sweeney Tacoma)
Siddhartha Mukherjee has that rare combination of traits: empathy, compassion, deep medical knowledge, fine communication skills, and, most impressive, humility in the face of much that is still unknown about cancer, its treatment, and the psychology of patients. The latter is particularly important as he details case histories requiring a great amount of courage by patients enduring the treatments, which (as the patient has been warned) may at the very best only BUY TIME. He is far from objective in evaluating developments like the recourse to radical mastectomy which crippled so many women physically (and unnecessarily). When he sees light dawning on the horizon, his prose fairly gallops as he runs to embrace it! As a cancer patient, this book helped me put my own situation in perspective. Best of all, Emperor of All Maladies kept me riveted, like a good suspense novel. It's fine for reading in bed when the reader is fatigued by cancer treatment and yearning for conversation with an understanding friend.

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Cindyann , January 01, 2012
Don't be afraid of this book! "The Emperor of All Maladies, A Biography of Cancer", written by Siddhartha Mukerjee, a physician/researcher, is a very understandable read for the lay person. Dr. Mukerjee presents the chronology of cancer in an informative and easily readable way. It is fascinating to learn how the links between cancer and the environment were made and how cancer treatments have evolved over the years. This is a disease that is touching everyone's life. While we may have a way to go before a definitive cure is found, it is inspiring to read how far we have come in understanding and treating this emperor of all maladies. This is one of the best books of the past year. Highly recommended.

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loonchaser , January 01, 2012
an excellent history of the development of chemotherapy

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Nancy D. , January 01, 2012
This book reads like a novel, but is filled with understandable language concerning the history of cancer and the various attempts at cures. I bought it on sight, as my son was battling melanoma at the time, and I was reading everything cancer-related that I could get my hands on.

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JEAN PACE , January 01, 2012
I was entertained, flabbergasted, educated, taken for a thrilling ride through the centuries of the hunt for cancer's Rosetta stone, and all the while enjoying some of the best writing I've read in years.

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Thomas Adams , January 01, 2012 (view all comments by Thomas Adams)
Very well written, with a wealth of information on cancer and the history of its treatment. The author also communicates, in a quite engaging manner, his own experiences as a physician and the human dimensions - the costs and tragedies - of this disease.

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bscheldt , September 01, 2011 (view all comments by bscheldt)
After loosing a friend and co-worker to this disease, I decided to read this book to find out what I could about the killer of so many people. This book is very interesting in that it tells of the advancement and set backs of the search for the cure; the people doing the searching and what they have gone through. I was amazed at how surgeries were done back before anethesia! It is a very informational book and is written in a way that you don't have to be a scientist to understand.

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Judith Sanborn , August 31, 2011 (view all comments by Judith Sanborn)
This book read like a novel for me. I could not put it down. Maybe it is because I am a Breast Cancer survivor that it had such a profound impact on me. I found it both encouraging and discouraging at the same time. I was encouraged by the dedication of the researchers who are working every day to find targeted therapies for different types of cancer. I was discouraged by the fact that there will probably never be a "cure" for cancer as we think of cures. I was disheartened by the slowness of the FDA to approve drugs that could save lives and more recently heartened by the news that the FDA has expdedited the approval of some drugs that are targeted for certain types of cancer. Maybe progress is actually being made. Of course the historical information about diagnosis was fascinating. By the end of the book, I began thinking of cancer as a devious, resistant, insidious entity that tries to outsmart all the efforts that are being made to eradicate it. Sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it fails. Dr. Mukherjee gives us hope that the successes will soon over take the failures.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9781439170915
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
08/09/2011
Publisher:
Scribner Book Company
Pages:
573
Height:
1.50IN
Width:
6.10IN
Thickness:
1.50
Copyright Year:
2011
Author:
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Media Run Time:
B
Subject:
cancer, pulitzer prize, chemotherapy, radiation, science, rhode scholar, stanford, oxford, harvard, cancer cure, cancer survivors, cancer treatments, brain cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, cellular science, columbia unive
Subject:
cancer, pulitzer prize, chemotherapy, radiation, science, rhode scholar, stanford, oxford, harvard, cancer cure, cancer survivors, cancer treatments, brain cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, cellular science, columbia university, children s leukemia, bio
Subject:
History
Subject:
Health and Medicine-Medical Specialties
Subject:
rsity, children s leukemia, biology, perseverance, pathology, resilience, pathologist, tumor, cancer genome, hereditary,

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