The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee (PDF)

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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and 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—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. Now includes an excerpt from Siddhartha Mukherjee’s new book Song of the Cell!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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Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee”The Emperor of All Maladies” is a literary achievement of science. It’s an enlightening journey through the history of cancer through the eyes of a coming-of-age oncologist. A beautifully written book that treats this complex topic of cancer with the utmost care and respect while providing the reader valuable insights into the scientific quest to eradicate or control this insidious disease. This outstanding 608-page book is broken out into six major parts: 1. “Of blacke cholor, without boyling”, 2. An Impatient War, 3. “Will you turn me out if I can’t get better?”, 4. Prevention is the Cure, 5. “A Distorted Version of our Normal Selves”, and 6. The Fruits of Long Endeavors.Positives:1. Outstanding accomplishment of literary science. Extensive research of cancer and conveyed to the masses in an enlightening readable fashion. Kudos!2. Engaging and humane prose.3. What sets this book apart is the author’s ability to interweave human stories into the biography of cancer thus achieving a perfect balance of humanity and science.4. Great facts and fascinating scientific tidbits about cancer throughout this book.5. Cancer…what it is, and the never ending scientific quest to eradicate or control it.6. Cancer has many manifestations. This book covers many of them through the eyes of the patients, scientists and doctors. Leukemia and breast cancer, do get special attention.7. Innate ability of Dr. Mukherjee to provide details with panache.8. The history of the drugs developed to combat the many manifestations of cancer. The history of the agencies, and support groups. The scientists behind the design, development and deployment of the drugs.9. Great quotes, “Cancer thus exploits the fundamental logic of evolution unlike any other illness. If we, as a species, are the ultimate product of Darwinian selection, then so, too, is this incredible disease that lurks inside us”.10. A look into the history of ancient diseases. The progression (not always in a straight line either) of science as it relates to treating diseases. The key discoveries that were instrumental to progress, anesthesia as an example. The discovery of radium in 1902.11. The history of organizations launched to fund research. Special mention to the tireless efforts of Mary Woodard Lasker and Sidney Farber.12. Conducting clinical research. The trials and tribulations. The various treatments and effects. A lot of focus on chemotherapy. The multidrug concoctions. The reality of the results. The tamoxifen trial.13. The causes of cancer. The various theories. As an example a look into the somatic mutation hypothesis of cancer.14. The quest to understand the biological behavior of cancer before going on an all out attack. Fascinating stuff.15. The quest to prevent diseases. Many examples of historical cases: the “chimney-sweepers’ cancer, tobacco, malaria, to name a few. Find out the extreme experiment that put one scientist’s own life at risk.16. The history behind screening trials. Pap smears, mammography, the findings, and the lessons learned.17. The insidious disease…AIDS. Retroviruses.18. The link between chromosomal changes and cancer. The causes.19. Proto-oncogenes. “Cancer was intrinsically loaded in our genome, awaiting activation”. The first cogent and comprehensive theory of carcinogenesis.20. Understanding the progression of cancer. “Down to their innate molecular core, cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves.”21. The six rules that explain core behavior of more than a hundred types of tumors.22. The three new Achilles’ heels of cancer. The three essential ingredients for a targeted therapy for cancer.23. The current biological and societal challenges of cancer. The pathway disease.24. Excellent links to notes.25. The inclusion of a glossary and bibliography.Negatives:1. At over 600 pages, it does require an investment in time. Thankfully, it’s time well invested.2. Lack of charts and illustrations would have added value. Could have been added to appendices to avoid disrupting elegant prose.3. It can be an emotional read sometimes as the reader will find themselves invested in the lives of so many people…let’s face it, we are talking about dealing with cancer.4. Some readers will get lost among the many and recurring storylines.5. The photographs would have added more value if they would have been inserted in the context of the narrative instead of a separate appendix.In summary, this is an outstanding and important book. What sets this book apart is Dr. Mukherjee’s ability to weave multiple storylines into a fascinating narrative about the history of cancer with just the right touch of humanity. This was an ambitious book and I can only imagine how daunting a quest this was but the author succeeds and as a result we the readers benefit from the knowledge and wisdom. I can’t recommend it enough!Further suggestions: ”

⭐” by Rebecca Skloot, ”

⭐” by Devra Davis, ”

⭐” by Robert A. Weinberg, ”

⭐”, ”

⭐” by Sam Kean, and ”

⭐” by Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn.

⭐**I am pleased that Dr. Mukherjee has won the Pulitzer prize in general non fiction for this book, 4-18-11In the United States one in three women and one in two men will develop cancer in their lifetime. Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee, a medical oncologist, has written a definitive history of cancer. It may be one of the best medical books I have read. Complex but simple in terms of understanding. A timeline of a disease and those who waged the wars. In 1600 BC the first case of probable breast cancer was documented. In the thousands of years since, the Greek word, ‘onkos’, meaning mass or burden, has become the disease of our time. Cancer. The title of the book, is “a quote from a 19Th century physician” Dr Mukherjee had found inscribed in a library book that “cancer is the emperor of all maladies, the king of our terrors”.As a health care professional and as a woman who is six years post breast cancer, Cancer has played a big part in my life. I used to walk by the Oncology clinic, and quicken my pace. I used to give chemotherapy to my patients, before it was discovered that the chemo was so toxic that it needed to be made under sterile conditions and given by professionals who specialized in Oncology. Dr Mukherjee, wisely discusses cancer in the context of patients, those of us who suffer. After all it is because of the patients, the people who have gone before us, who have contracted some form of cancer, they are the base of this science.Dr Mukherjee started his immersion in cancer medicine at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He relates the beginning of the study of ALL, Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, by Dr Sidney Farber in 1947. Dr Farber, a pathologist at the time decided to change his focus and start caring for patients. He was given a medication to trial for ALL, and though most of his patients died, some survived to remission. This opened his world and with the help of Mary Lasker, and Charles E Dana, philanthropists, they opened one of the first clinics that specialized in cancer care and research, The Dana Farber Cancer Center. Dr Mukherjee gives us the timeline of ALL and lymphomas and the medications that turned into chemotherapy. The development of specific care for blood cancers and the emergence of AIDS and patient activism. He discusses the surgery for breast cancer. It was thought that the more radical the surgery the better the outcomes. We now know that lumpectomies have an excellent outcome. But, women before me had a radical removal of breast, chest tissue, lymph nodes and sometimes ribs. The lesson learned is that breast cancer is very curable now and all those men and women, the patients who suffered, gave us the answers and cancer care has moved on.The onslaught of chemotherapies changed the face of cancer, and the 1970’s served us well. In 1986 the first outcomes of cancer care were measured. Tobacco emerged as an addiction and soon lung cancer was a leading cause of death. Presidential Commissions ensued, politics entered the world of cancer, the war against cancer and the war against smoking. The Pap smear was developed, and prevention came to the fore. The two sides of cancer, the researchers and the physicians at the bedside, who often thought never the twain shall meet, recognized the importance of research to bedside.The story of the boy ‘Jimmy’ from New Sweden, Maine, became the face of childhood cancer. The Jimmy Fund, a Boston Red Sox charity in Boston, is still going strong today. ‘Jimmy’ opened the door to the public for the need for money and research, and care for those with cancer. We follow Dr Mukherjee with one of his first patients, Carla, from her diagnosis through her treatment. He has given a face to cancer. We all know someone with cancer, those who survived and those who did not. Cancer prevention is now the wave of the future.”Cancer is and may always be part of the burden we carry with us,” says Dr Mukherjee. He has now written a “biography of cancer” for us, those without special medical knowledge. However, he does go astray in some discussions such as genetics. I have an excellent medical background, and found I was floundering at times. As I discovered,and Dr. Mukherjee agrees, our patients are our heroes. They/we withstand the horrors of cancer, and the horrific, sometimes deadly treatments. The stories of his patients make us weep, and the complex decision making about their care make him the most caring of physicians.The ‘quest for the cure’ is the basis of all science and research, and Dr Mukherjee has written a superb tome in language that we can all attempt to understand. The biography of Cancer. Cancer may always be with us,Dr Mukherjee hopes that we outwit this devil and survive.Highly Recommended. prisrob 11-13-10My first introduction to the dreaded disease of cancer was through movies, where the hero bleeds through his nose, wraps a shawl and goes around with unshaven face, singing sad songs about his plight. My mother’s narrations about her elder sister’s traumatic experience with breast cancer and resultant mastectomy at a young age didn’t make much of an impact on me. As I grew up, there were so many characters with cancer in so many movies that the word cancer itself started to feel like those foreign locations that the lead characters go to for their duets – exotic, intriguing, yet faraway, having nothing to do with me. But as I matured into adulthood, I started seeing relatives, families of friends and colleagues bear the brunt of this ominous disease. My brief volunteering with an NGO that works for cancer patients brought me face to face with the seriousness of this scourge of humans. Young children suffering from leukemia, men in their early twenties fighting lung cancer caused by smoking, elderly people disfigured by throat cancer due to tobacco use – cancer was no longer exotic and faraway. It was close and gross.When recently someone near and dear was diagnosed with cancer, I felt my curiosity piqued. I was looking for resources to learn more about this disease and do what I can to spread awareness. That’s how I found this book. And, what a worthy primer this turned out to be!Cancer is not a modern illness. Its ancientness parallels that of our own. For millennia, people have suffered from and succumbed to cancer. But what makes this dreaded disease unique is its ability to evolve at the same rate as we do. Every time we find a cure and hope to kill this disease forever, cancer evolves and moves the bull’s eye. To borrow an idea from the author, imagine an Achilles whose vulnerability shifts someplace else, just as you target an arrow at his heel.All those centuries of painstaking research has taught us one thing – this disease emerges from within. While external agents – like viruses and carcinogens – play a crucial role in waking this demon from its slumber, cancer is something internalized. It is our own body cells gone rogue, disobeying the lifecycle of birth-growth-decline. In a cruel twist of fate, our own body cells, nano-representations of our own selves, find a mutated vigor for ‘life’, start proliferating so profusely that they end up killing us, their collective image. Killing a harmful virus or bacteria has been relatively easier, because they have definite shape, purpose and, especially, are apart from us. But cancer is a part of us, our own cells, our genes, DNAs gone rogue. Not just that. Each of these mutations takes its own unique form as there are individuals. Cancer isn’t one single disease to find a cure against. It is a bunch of mutations, the perverted race of cells to proliferate and spread all over.This book taught me those things in an intense way. Starting from the earliest mentions of this disease in history, nearly 2500 years ago, to the latest development in the field of oncology, this book tries to light up a very vast area. And, it succeeds too. The tug of war between cancer and science, the misunderstandings, poorly designed treatments, lessons learnt, sacrifices by patients as well as physicians, their tenacity in the face of adversity, emotional / physical reliefs brought by discovery of cures, relapses and remissions, egos and ebullience of the people involved, this book tells it all. If you are looking to learn what cancer is and what a devastating trail it has left all through the annals of mankind, then this is a book you must start with. The sheer effort and research that fills these pages is astounding. Dr. Mukherjee has put his heart and soul into this book.The book is comprehensive but not complete though. For example, the book doesn’t dwell into ovarian cancer, something that I was so keen to learn about. The book doesn’t provide any advice on how to prevent cancer, if at all it is possible, or what kinds of lifestyles are prone to the risk of it. But, of course, the good doctor promptly justifies his reasons in the annexures.This book doesn’t tell you everything that you would like to know about cancer. But it will tell you all the basics that you need to know about it. If you are pursuing the subject with curiosity, this is a good book to begin with. Not an easy read, but definitely worth the time.As I finished reading and sat staring at the covers, I had this strange emotion – in their traits of reproducing profusely, migrating to wherever possible, reshaping the landscape of their destination (organ), and increasing ability to defy death that results in the ultimate demise of the host organism, isn’t cancer quite akin to us humans? Are cancer cells the microcosmic parallels to what we humans are to the macrocosm, i.e., the Universe?!Who knows?! May be, we are!

⭐My 10 year old daughter has Leukaemia. This book has fascinated me. I have found it both deeply disturbing and strangely comforting at the same time. It is beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, which considering the subject matter, somewhat surprised me. This is no beach read, but will draw you in and leave you feeling optimistic and incredibly grateful to the doctors, researchers and brave people who dared to push the boundaries in the search for a cure. Some impressively tenacious people have got us to where we are now and how they came to this point is utterly mind-blowing.

⭐This is an approachable and sympathetic look at the development and progression of cancer therapies from the earliest recorded cases through to the state of the art in 2011. It is well written and referenced, and is very useful from a teaching perspective, explaining complex concepts in a clear way using effective analogies. It is well worth reading by any scientist or clinician with an interest in cancer.My only slight criticism is that it is very US-centric, skating over the huge influence UK, European and Asian science had on cancer diagnosis and treatment. And as an immunologist I would have liked more on the transformative effects immunotherapy has had on targeted cancer treatment. However I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the anatomy, history and treatment of cancer.

⭐No words can do justice to the raw emotions that pour out through this masterpiece. The reader is taken on a roller coaster ride through the annals of history as mankind struggles against the primordial malady of cancer, seemingly outwitting it at multiple junctures, only to be sternly reminded of the brilliance of natural evolution of life in its most naked and dangerous form- A multicellular beast of a disease with mol Cupar foundations in a single celled anomaly.

⭐I am indebted to a reviewer (Sinohey) of ‘The Cancer Chronicles’ for pointing me to this book. Cancer is an illness which every one of us is likely to come into contact with; certainly, several close relatives of mine have died of one form or other of the disease and other (very close) relatives have been treated successfully, whilst another is undergoing treatment.This book does an excellent job, as far as my knowledge extends, in providing a historical guide to the ways in which cancer has been treated and the growing understanding of what cancer actually is. The two have not necessarily gone hand in hand, and it is comparatively recently that the understanding of the biology of cancer has produced targeted treatments.The flip side of that understanding, though, is that it is quite likely there will never be a magic ‘cure’ for cancer. In some ways, as the book explains, everyone’s cancer at the genetic level is unique, though it appears there are certain genes which are likely to be drivers of cancer. But with an aging population, cancer may be, like wrinkles, a feature of old age. The good news is that cancers that affect the young have been the ones where the treatment has been most effective.Some of the chapters in the book that deal with the biology of cancer at the chromosome level are a little hard going for a non-biologist. A diagram may have been useful in places. But, ultimately, the book is worth the effort and the information within it should help dispel some of the fear and dread that surrounds mention of the disease.

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