Book Review: The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddahartha Mukherjee

What a fantastic book!

I almost want to characterize it as a love story. The number of sources Mukherjee pulled from, the number of interviews conducted, the sheer magnitude of work that went into this book… And then to tie it together in such an elegant and compassionate way… This herculean effort could only be a labour of love - the labour of someone who spends almost every waking moment watching cancer kill, break, build, and change people.

This was an unusual way to consume(?) academic literature. I am used to reading papers, and semi-used to reading history books, but almost all of the historical content in this book comes directly from academic papers. It was like reading an annotated, pared-down anthology of the top cancer papers of the past 100 years - or maybe that’s what it was. Mukherjee does an excellent job communicating why certain contributions were so game-changing, and positioning these dusty, esoteric, journal articles within the broader context.

My one complaint was how high and loose the author played with timelines, and my other one complaint is how many names are memorialized in this book. Both of these served to make the story sometimes a little hard to follow.

All in all, a great read. Highly recommended.