LoveReading Says
Winner of the Guardian First Book Award 2011.
Shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize 2011.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction 2011.
A magnificent, beautifully written biography of cancer -- from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles to cure, control and conquer it, to a radical new understanding of its essence.
Author and academic Sarah Churchwell, who was on the judging panel, said: “The Emperor of All Maladies is a cultural history of cancer and its treatment, from its first identification as a disease in the ancient world to 21st century research into its cellular genesis and treatment.
“Siddhartha Mukherjee has marshalled an immense amount of material into a readable and inspiring story. The result is a gripping, enlightening read about the nature of illness and our battle against what begins to look like mortality itself.”
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The Emperor of All Maladies Synopsis
A magnificent, beautifully written biography of cancer - from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles to cure, control and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.In The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee, doctor, researcher and award-winning science writer, 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, arrogance and misperception, all leveraged against a disease that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out 'war against cancer'. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories and deaths, told through the eyes of predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary.From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteeth-century recipient of primitive radiation and chemotherapy and Mukherjee's own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through toxic, bruising, and draining regimes to survive and to increase the store of human knowledge.Riveting and magesterial, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments and a brilliant new perspective on the way doctors, scientists, philosophers and lay people have observed and understood the human body for millennia.
About This Edition
ISBN: |
9780007428052 |
Publication date: |
25th November 2010 |
Author: |
Siddhartha Mukherjee |
Publisher: |
4th Estate an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers |
Format: |
Paperback |
Pagination: |
592 pages |
Primary Genre |
Biographies & Autobiographies
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Recommendations: |
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