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Winner of the Guardian First Book Award 2011Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Non-fiction 2011Shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book PrizeShortlisted for the Duff Cooper PrizeNow, as cancer becomes an ever more universal experience, the need to understand it, and its treatment, has never been more compelling. In this groundbreaking and award-winning account Siddhartha Mukherjee tells the fascinating story of our relationship with this disease. From brutal early surgical treatments, to Sidney Farber’s hugely risky discovery of chemotherapy, to the author’s treatment of his own patients, he reveals how far we have come in solving one of science’s great mysteries and offers a fascinating glimpse of our future progress.Amazon.com ReviewAmazon 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 MongFrom Publishers WeeklyStarred 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.File Size: 1816 KBPrint Length: 597 pagesPublisher: Fourth Estate (February 8, 2011)http://www.amazon.com/Emperor-All-Maladies-Siddhartha-Mukher…