Awards
2011 Pulitzer Prize Winner
Synopses & Reviews
Written by cancer physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer Siddhartha Mukherjee,
The Emperor of All Maladies is a stunning combination of medical history, cutting-edge science, and narrative journalism that transforms our understanding of cancer and much of the world around us. Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist's precision, a novelist's richness of detail, a historian's range, and a biographer's passion.
The story of cancer is one of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, arrogance, paternalism, and misperception, all leveraged against a disease that, just decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out "war against cancer." It's a story of science and scientists, of centuries of discoveries, of setbacks and victories and deaths, told through the eyes of Mukherjee's predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary.
From the Persian Queen Atossa, who instructed her Greek slave to cut off her malignant breast, to the radical surgeries of the nineteenth century, to the first recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy, to Mukherjee's own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is a story of people—and their families—who soldier through toxic, bruising, and draining regimens to survive and to increase the store of human knowledge.
Riveting and magisterial, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments and offers a bold new perspective on the way doctors, scientists, philosophers, and lay people have observed and understood the human body for millennia.
Review
"An inspiring account of a very personal battle against 'the plague of our generation.'" ---Kirkus
Review
"Two-time Audie Award winner Stephen Hoye does a great job of conveying all of the nuances of the narrative.... This highly accessible and quality audio production will greatly satisfy audiences liking titles that similarly attempt to humanize otherwise clinical topics, such as Seth Mnookin's The Panic Virus, Mary Roach's Stiff, and Atul Gawande's Complications." ---Library Journal Starred Audio Review
Synopsis
A magnificent, beautifully written epic "biography" of cancer—in the tradition of Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon, this is a brilliant exploration of the past, present, and future of a complex disease that defines us and our time.
About the Author
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 Presbyterian Hospital. A former Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, the University of Oxford (where he received a Ph.D. studying cancer-causing viruses), and Harvard Medical School. Siddhartha 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, the New England Journal of Medicine, Neuron, and the Journal of Clinical Investigation. He has also written for such publications as the New York Times and the New Republic. He lives in Boston and New York with his wife, Sarah Sze, and his daughter, Leela. Stephen Hoye has won thirteen AudioFile Earphones Awards and two prestigious APA Audie Awards, including one for the New York Times bestseller Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki. A graduate of London's Guildhall and a veteran of London's West End, Stephen has recorded many other notable titles, such as Every Second Counts by Lance Armstrong and The Google Story by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed.