This week I finished reading the Emperor of All Maladies, the 2010 “biography” of cancer by Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee. The author, a medical oncologist and researcher now at Columbia University, provides a detailed account of malignancies – and how physicians and scientists have understood and approached a myriad of tumors – through history.
The encyclopedic, Pulitzer Prize-winning book is rich with details. In the first half, Mukherjee focuses on clinical aspects of malignancy. He works both ancient and modern stories into the narrative; the reader learns of Atossa, the Persian queen of the 6th Century BCE who covered her breast disease, and Thomas Hodgkin, who in the 19th Century dissected cadavers and noted a “peculiar” pattern of glandular swelling in some young men, and Einar Gustafson, aka Jimmy, who was among the first children cured of leukemia in the 1950s.
The second half is a tour-de force on cancer biology; the author winds distinct threads
See more The Emperor of All Maladies: A Detailed Narrative of Cancer History and Ideas
