So obviously we all hate cancer, which is as controversial an opinion as saying puppies are cute, but considering that this post is going up on a site honoring one of our own lost to the disease, this review feels a bit like critiquing a biography of Lex Luthor for the Daily Planet. Thait said, let me adjust my robes and address the choir. The subtitle of the book is “a biography of cancer,” and it aims to follow the disease and its treatments from […]
Both an intimate history and a large-scale one
For years, people have recommended Siddhartha Mukherjee’s book about cancer, The Emperor of all Maladies, to me. It’s sooooo good, they would say, not like you think a book about cancer would be. I don’t read a ton of nonfiction and a book about the history of cancer has always sounded incredibly grim, despite what anyone says, so I’ve always politely ignored their suggestions. After reading The Gene however, I’m actually considering picking it up. Mukherjee is an incredibly talented writer. The Gene delves into […]
Dense but interesting
This is not a book to read in an evening or two. For one thing, it’ll depress the hell out of you. It’s also very dense, very technical and chock full of information. But don’t let that dissuade you, if you’re interested in this sort of thing — taking it a chunk at a time made it digestible, and very, very interesting to read. “Down to their innate molecular core, cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves.” Siddhartha Mukherjee tells two […]
Know Your Enemy
Like most people, I find pretty much everything about cancer terrifying. It doesn’t help that I’ve chosen a profession [Firefighter] that has all kinds of increased rates of cancer. Most of us at work don’t even like to talk about it because it reminds us that the unknown and uncontrollable might hit us at anytime. So you might wonder why I chose to read The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (2010) by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Every once in a while I like to delve […]