Reviews for The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Publishers Weekly
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Mukherjee's debut book is a sweeping epic of obsession, brilliant researchers, dramatic new treatments, euphoric success and tragic failure, and the relentless battle by scientists and patients alike against an equally relentless, wily, and elusive enemy. From the first chemotherapy developed from textile dyes to the possibilities emerging from our understanding of cancer cells, Mukherjee shapes a massive amount of history into a coherent story with a roller-coaster trajectory: the discovery of a new treatment-surgery, radiation, chemotherapy-followed by the notion that if a little is good, more must be better, ending in disfiguring radical mastectomy and multidrug chemo so toxic the treatment ended up being almost worse than the disease. The first part of the book is driven by the obsession of Sidney Farber and philanthropist Mary Lasker to find a unitary cure for all cancers. (Farber developed the first successful chemotherapy for childhood leukemia.) The last and most exciting part is driven by the race of brilliant, maverick scientists to understand how cells become cancerous. Each new discovery was small, but as Mukherjee, a Columbia professor of medicine, writes, "Incremental advances can add up to transformative changes." Mukherjee's formidable intelligence and compassion produce a stunning account of the effort to disrobe the "emperor of maladies." (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.


Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Mukherjee's magisterial history of cancer research is poorly served by Stephen Hoye's impersonal, tone-deaf narration. Mukherjee is a practicing oncologist, and his is a deeply personal account, replete with stories of his own patients and practice, that begs for an intimate reading. But Hoye is pedantic, dry, stentorian-everything that this book isn't-and his newscaster's delivery cannot convey the author's compassion for his patients or the suspense and thrill of scientific discovery that the book so brilliantly describes. A Scribner hardcover. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.


Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

*Starred Review* Apparently researching, treating, and teaching about cancer isn't enough of a challenge for Columbia University cancer specialist Mukherjee. He was also moved to write a biography of a disease whose name, for millennia, could not be uttered. The eminently readable result is a weighty tale of an enigma that has remained outside the grasp of both the people who endeavored to know it and those who would prefer never to have become acquainted with it. An unauthorized biography told through the voices of people who have lived, toiled, and, yes, died under cancer's inexorable watch. Mukherjee recounts cancer's first known literary reference hence its birth, so to speak in the teachings of the Egyptian physician Imhotep in the twenty-fifth century BCE, in which it is clear that Imhotep possessed no tools with which to treat what appears to be breast cancer. His cryptic note under Therapy: There is none. Throughout cancer's subsequent years, many more physicians and scientists with names both familiar and obscure attempted and occasionally succeeded in deciphering or unlocking keys to many of the disease's mysteries. Alas, this is not a posthumous biography, but it is nonetheless a surprisingly accessible and encouraging narrative.--Chavez, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist


Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Taking a strictly Western approach to the study and treatment of cancer, clinical oncologist Mukherjee presents a comprehensive, fascinating, and informative view of the subject that is part historical treatise, part biography, part memoir, part case study, and part science textbook. Two-time Audie Award winner Stephen Hoye does a great job of conveying all of the nuances of the narrative, which can jump around at times and includes a large number of footnotes. This highly accessible and quality audio production will greatly satisfy audiences liking titles that similarly attempt to humanize otherwise clinical topics, such as Seth Mnookin's The Panic Virus, Mary Roach's Stiff, and Atul Gawande's Complications. [See Major Audio Releases, LJ 10/1/10; the National Book Critics Circle Award-nominated Scribner hc was a 2010 LJ Best Consumer Health Book and a 2010 LJ Best Sci-Tech Book; the Scribner pb will publish in September 2011.-Ed.]-Nicole A. Cooke, Montclair State Univ. Lib., NJ (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.


Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The physician/science writer's exhaustive "biography" of cancer has been garnering much buzz; simultaneous release with the Scribner hc (125,000-copy first printing); Stephen Hoye reads. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.


Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The story of cancer, as well as a coming-of-age tale of a renowned oncologist.Cancer physician Mukherjee (Medicine/Columbia Univ.) began this book in 2003 while completing a residency in medicine and graduate work in cancer immunology. He shapes the narrative as a heroic contest between two adversariescancer and the brave patients who fight for their lives, despite horrendous nausea from chemotherapy and other painful effects of the disease and the treatment. Only since the 1950s have cancer victims had a reasonable chance of surviving and returning to normal life, and even then surgical treatment often left patients disabled while halting but not stopping the spread of metastatic cancers. In addition, researchers had to consider the effects of radiation in destroying healthy tissue and causing leukemia and pernicious anemia. The side effects of both radiation and chemotherapy were frequently deadly. Mukherjee traces the refinement of treatments over the past 50 years and the development of early detection, as well as the growing understanding of the relationship between genetic abnormalities and environmental carcinogens in causing cancers. In 2005, significant advances and progress were noted by the scientific community. "The mortality for nearly every major form of cancer," writes the author, "had continuously dropped for fifteen straight years." Mukherjee also looks optimistically to the future when the Human Genome Project completes "The Cancer Genome Atlas," which will become "a compendium of every gene mutated in the most common forms of cancer."An inspiring account of a very personal battle against "the plague of our generation."]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.


Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

See Major Audio Releases, LJ 10/1/10; the Scribner hc is an LJ Best Consumer Health pick of 2010; -Stephen Hoye reads. (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.