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Siddhartha Mukherjee

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The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer Kindle Edition

by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Pulitzer PrizeWinner, 2011

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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597 pages
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English
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November 16, 2010
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Li had stumbled on a deep and fundamental principle of oncology: cancer needed to be systemically treated long after every visible sign of it had vanished.
Highlighted by 2,959 Kindle readers
Cancer cells can grow faster, adapt better. They are more perfect versions of ourselves.
Highlighted by 2,885 Kindle readers
Leukemia was a malignant proliferation of white cells in the blood. It was cancer in a molten, liquid form.
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2010: "In 2010, about six hundred thousand Americans, and more than 7 million humans around the world, will die of cancer." With this sobering statistic, physician and researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee begins his comprehensive and eloquent "biography" of one of the most virulent diseases of our time. An exhaustive account of cancer's origins, The Emperor of All Maladies illustrates how modern treatments--multi-pronged chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, as well as preventative care--came into existence thanks to a century's worth of research, trials, and small, essential breakthroughs around the globe. While The Emperor of All Maladies is rich with the science and history behind the fight against cancer, it is also a meditation on illness, medical ethics, and the complex, intertwining lives of doctors and patients. Mukherjee's profound compassion--for cancer patients, their families, as well as the oncologists who, all too often, can offer little hope--makes this book a very human history of an elusive and complicated disease. --Lynette Mong

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. 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 © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*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. --Donna Chavez

Review

“Mukherjee brings an impressive balance of empathy and dispassion to this instantly essential piece of medical journalism.”
—Time

“A meticulously researched, panoramic history . . . What makes Mukherjee’s narrative so remarkable is that he imbues decades of painstaking laboratory investigation with the suspense of a mystery novel and urgency of a thriller. . . . He possesses a striking gift for carving some of science’s most abstruse concepts into forms as easily understood and reconfigured as a child’s wooden blocks.”
—The Boston Globe

“Riveting and powerful . . . Mukherjee’s extraordinary book might stimulate a wider discussion of how to wisely allocate our precious health care resources.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“Remarkable . . . The reader devours this fascinating book . . . Mukherjee is a clear and determined writer. . . . An unusually humble, insightful book.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Extraordinary . . . So often physician writers attempt the delicacy of using their patients as a mirror to their own humanity. Mukherjee does the opposite. His book is not built to show us the good doctor struggling with tough decisions, but ourselves.”
—John Freeman, NPR

“Now and then a writer comes along who helps us fathom both the intricacies of a scientific specialty and its human meaning. Lewis Thomas, Sherwin Nuland, and Oliver Sacks come to mind. Add to their company Siddhartha Mukherjee.”
—Elle

“Rich and engrossing . . . With the perceptiveness and patience of a true scientist, [Mukherjee] begins to weave these individual threads into a coherent and engrossing narrative.”
—The Economist

“A brilliant, riveting history of the disease . . . Threaded throughout, and propelling the narrative forward, are the affecting tales of Mukherjee’s own patients.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Ambitious . . . Mukherjee has a storyteller’s flair and a gift for translating complex medical concepts into simple language.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Cancer has never been as fully explored as in Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee’s fascinating and moving history.”
—The Daily Beast

“With epic scope and passionate pen, The Emperor of All Maladies boldly addresses, then breaks down the monolith of disease.”
—The Onion A.V. Club

“Informative, elegant, comprehensive, and lucid.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Mukherjee’s elegant prose animates the science.”
—Bloomberg News

“Brilliant and riveting.”
—Associated Press

“[A] brilliant book.”
—Larry King

“A magnificent book.”
—Sanjay Gupta, M.D., CNN

“An ambitious scientific, political, and cultural history.”
—Slate.com

“Intensely readable.”
—New York Post

“Impressive.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Mukherjee . . . writes with supreme authority.”
— The Seattle Times

“Mukherjee makes us understand that along with our terrible losses, great gains have been made.”
—Newsday

“Eminently readable . . . A surprisingly accessible and encouraging narrative.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“A beautifully written account of the ingenuity, hubris, courage, and utter confusion humankind has brought to its attempts to grapple with cancer.”
—Maclean’s

“Future biographers and historians of the disease will labor from deep with the long shadow cast by Siddhartha Mukherjee’s remarkable The Emperor of All Maladies. . . . A vivid and profoundly engaging read.”
—BookPage

“Sweeping . . . Mukherjee’s formidable intelligence and compassion produce a stunning account.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies left me shaken, fascinated, and not depressed, because he gives a face to our old enemy, cancer.”
—Emma Donoghue, author of Room

“Sid Mukherjee’s book is a pleasure to read, if that is the right word. . . . His book is the clearest account I have read on this subject. With The Emperor of All Maladies, he joins that small fraternity of practicing doctors who cannot just talk about their profession but write about it.”
—Tony Judt, author of The Memory Chalet

“Rarely have the science and poetry of illness been so elegantly braided together as they are in this erudite, engrossing, kind book.”
—Andrew Solomon, National Book Award–winning author of The Noonday Demon

“At once learned and skeptical, unsentimental and humane, The Emperor of All Maladies is that rarest of things—a noble book.”
—David Rieff, author of Swimming in a Sea of Death

“A magisterial, wise, and deeply human piece of writing.”
—Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost and Bury the Chains

“The Emperor of All Maladies beautifully describes the nature of cancer from a patient’s perspective and how basic research has opened the door to understanding this disease.”
—Bert Vogelstein, director, Ludwig Center at Johns Hopkins University

“A labor of love . . . as comprehensive as possible.”
—George Canellos, M.D., William Rosenberg Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

“An elegant . . . tour de force. The Emperor of All Maladies reads like a novel . . . but it deals with real people and real successes, as well as with the many false notions and false leads. Not only will the book bring cancer research and cancer biology to the lay public, it will help attract young researchers to a field that is at once exciting and heart wrenching . . . and important.”
—Donald Berry, Ph.D., MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of Texas

About the Author

Siddhartha Mukherjee is the author of The Gene: An Intimate History, a #1 New York Times bestseller; The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction; and The Laws of Medicine. He is the editor of Best Science Writing 2013. Mukherjee is an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University and a cancer physician and researcher. A Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford, and Harvard Medical School. In 2023, he was elected as a new member of the National Academy of Medicine. He has published articles in many journals, including Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, Cell, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker. He lives in New York with his wife and daughters. Visit his website at: SiddharthaMukherjee.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Emperor of all Maladies

From AudioFile

Mukherjee's sweeping biography of cancer stretches from its earliest mentions in the historical record to the latest in treatments and covers many advancements and missteps along the way. Although Stephen Hoye's narration is not immediately striking, it complements Mukherjee's work well. Hoye presents even the more complicated medical procedures with a clarity of speech that allows for easy understanding by any listener, even one not well versed in the science of cancer. This is an ambitious work but one that is very accessible and is made even more so by Hoye's narration. J.L.K. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003UYUP58
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner; 1st edition (November 16, 2010)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 16, 2010
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 16631 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 597 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #40,316 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2 in History of Biology & Nature
- #3 in Lung Cancer (Books)
- #3 in Medical History

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Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher. He is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and a staff cancer physician at the CU/NYU Presbytarian Hospital. A former Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford (where he received a PhD studying cancer-causing viruses) and from Harvard Medical School. His laboratory focuses on discovering new cancer drugs using innovative biological methods. Mukherjee trained in cancer medicine at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute of Harvard Medical School and was on the staff at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He has published articles and commentary in such journals as Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Neuron and the Journal of Clinical Investigation and in publications such as the New York Times and the New Republic. His work was nominated for Best American Science Writing, 2000 (edited by James Gleick). He lives in Boston and New York with his wife, Sarah Sze, an artist, and with his daughter, Leela.

His author website is www.siddharthamukherjee.me

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A. Guenther

Thorough, but engaging

Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2024

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I had one or two exceptional professors at the university I went to, and one of them taught physiology. She'd introduce us to a mystery of the body and got us thinking about possible solutions before she told us what an organ/other part of the body did--and it was such an engaging way to learn.
Mukherjee uses the same method, and as I was reading, I'd wonder about different ways to solve for a problem, before reading what scientists actually did. A book of this size could have been very heavy, but it was easy to stay interested, and I really enjoyed the literary analogies that were sprinkled throughout.
It's astonishing to learn how relatively new much of cancer knowledge is. I knew some things in the book, of course, but it covers many decades and many aspects (social and political, as well as scientific). I can't imagine how much work went into writing this book, and it's well worth reading. Don't let the length scare you--because of the way it's written, it's easy to put down and pick up again later. Well worth reading!

6 people found this helpful

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Therin

The History of Cancer and it's Treatment

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2024

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Going back to the ancient Egyptians, Greek and Roman cultures, cancer has been known for a long time. The Egyptian said, after describing the growth in what felt like modern terms, "there is nothing to do." Then there is the story of all the things we tried to do for the next several thousand years, told in a way that makes it a story, from the voice of a writer who is easy to understand, even if you have no medical background. The things we have done to children with leukemia and women with breast cancer, are absolutely appalling. What we know NOW is SO NEW, since 2000, the year I was diagnosed with a breast cancer most likely to be very aggressive and to metastasize quickly and widely, I lived in an area where there was not an "ACTUP" group to assure I could get the medication I asked for, as it was still in trials. I survived regardless, though my "oncologists" expected me to die within two years. A little girl I know is being treated for childhood leukemia AFTER the time when we finally realized we had to deal with the blood-brain barrier, so her chances of survival are greatly increased, but it remains a challenge. The greatest impact this book had in my personal life, is understanding how long cancer has been recognized by healers from so many parts of the world, how dramatic treatment was, and how useless, until so very recently. It is such a testament to the value of true scientific study, and the brilliance of minds who would not give up or give in, as they allowed their determination to find a cure for this disease keep them looking, against such incredible odds, and to keep looking. Inspiring.

7 people found this helpful

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Book Shark

A Literary Achievement of Science

Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2013

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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: " The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks " by Rebecca Skloot, " The Secret History of the War on Cancer " by Devra Davis, " One Renegade Cell: How Cancer Begins (Science Masters Series) " by Robert A. Weinberg, " Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer ", " The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code " by Sam Kean, and " Cancer Ward " by Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn.

43 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Excelent read

Reviewed in Mexico on June 12, 2023

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Puts you through a "biography" of cancer. A journey throught history, the race to find a cure. And most important of all, how we as humans deal with cancer, our struggle with this "emperor of all maladies".

Highly recommended book.

Robert ‘Bob’ Macespera

Nonfiction at its best

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 12, 2023

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Popular science (or nonfiction) has become a genre, probably the most popular these days. See the best-sellers newspaper lists or the desks of any major bookshop and those will be plagued with the new form of nonfiction. Where before we were offered "how to guides" (how to get rich, thin, a better lover or parent) now we have perhaps better choices in the form of studies on almost everything: types of personalities, control of habits, approaches to group sociology, etc. etc. This is a healthy field, but marred recently by superficial books.
This "Emperor of all Maladies", most thankfully, stays at a safe distance of this recent trend of simple and/or rushed books and is already a canonical and exemplary nonfiction treaty of one of the fiercest and more devastating of maladies. It is superb.
Everything works in this volume, because the author is an eminency in his field, but he is never patronizing or condescending. He never writes as from a pulpit nor tries to impress the reader with his obviously vast knowledge of the matter at hand. Importantly, Mr Mukherjee never (not once) falls for easy sentimentalism or tries to engage through pity - and falling for this would be easy in a book about cancer. The reader feels at all times that the author is a mere guide with an authoritative voice. And yet some moments do provoke the reader to cringe, almost to suffer: the patient that consols the doctor when all the options for a cure are exhausted; the process of dealing with the empty beds in a children's ward, among others, are parts hard to finish.
The prose is at all times pitch-perfect and never falters, even in a 400-plus science book. The voice of the author, and its language, are always clear, personal and sober.
The book works also at another level, that of the politics of tackling such a disease. The right way to fight the malady or how to fund the enormous efforts to do so, become long and vapid discussions between bureaucrats and, at points, decades are lost because of lack of focus, pure greed or pettiness. The science is there - since the Egyptians, who spotted the malady yet reached, in 2600 BC !, a shocking conclusion: "Cure? None".
This is a very good book that has already raised the bar of nonfiction.

2 people found this helpful

Harshit Kumawat

A Book Beyond Appreciation

Reviewed in India on March 14, 2023

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I guess I am out of words to express my opinion about the book. I highly doubt any other book can be written on Cancer with such captivating explanation. From the moment I started reading this book I couldn't put it down. Such brilliant is the storytelling that it binds you to the theme of the book.
I read this book after reading Siddharth Mukherjee second book "The Gene - An Intimate History". These two books have had profound impact on my understanding of human biology. The author has taken us on a journey to let us know the experiments, struggles, disappointments, fights and eventual victories on many front of human biology.
This book deals with cancer. As the title of the book is aptly given, this indeed is "Biography of Cancer". The books tells the story of cancer from the very first written record of the disease to the latest advancements made in the field of cancer to better understand it and to find a permanent cure for it.
Why cancer still remains an elusive disease ? Why despite knowing so much about human genome we cannot find a cure for cancer ?
Will we actually be able to find a permanent cure? Or cancer will always remain one step ahead of us ? The book delves with these issues and tells the story of cancer which at times is complex, confusing and terrifying and at other times is intriguing, fascinating and beautiful.

3 people found this helpful

pd77

Long but very interesting.

Reviewed in France on January 19, 2023

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I first read "The Gene" that I liked very much. This one is also very good. It is long, but never boring. It also gives some moderate hope that one day we "will not die of cancer, but just die with cancer."

Alberto

A beautiful story narrated by a skilful writer

Reviewed in Spain on September 30, 2021

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I was looking for some scientific information about cancer, and I stumbled upon this book. I was expecting a somewhat boring chronology of cancer research; I couldn't have been more wrong.

The author makes a wonderful job in selecting stories and "storylines", and telling them in an enjoyable style (a well-deserved Pulitzer). You will travel through history and follow the fall of the humoral theory, the rise (and fall) of radical surgery, the rise (and fall) of radical chemotherapy, and the rise of the genetic theory of cancer.

It turns out that following the evolution of the scientific understanding of cancer is the best way to learn about it. In addition to cancer itself, the book teaches much about science going wrong: scientific communities following dogmas and being blind to evidence against them; a premature all in battle against cancer (lacking mechanistic understandings); fabrication of data; politics and corporations hampering scientific research; the loss of connection between doctors and patients.

A highly suggested read, although the book is slightly outdated now.

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