“Cancer cells can grow faster, adapt better. They are more perfect versions of ourselves.”–Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies
I knew this book was a good one, it won the Pulitzer Prize after all, but I was still surprised at how approachable and interesting it was. We tend to think of cancer as a modern plague but it has afflicted and killed humans for over 5,000 years. Siddhartha Mukherjee is a physician, researcher, and writer and has brought his considerable skill to this work. For all intents and purposes, this book is a biography of cancer and yet it reads like a medical thriller.
Mukherjee gives us the history of cancer, the evolution of cancer treatment, and explains the difficulty in finding a cure for cancer: every cancer is different so there cannot be a one size fits all cure. Despite that difficulty, Mukherjee is optimistic about the future of cancer treatments. With the prevalence of cancer in our modern world, this book is a must read.
Content Advisory: Surgical descriptions, death