The Emperor of All Maladies ─ A Biography of Cancer

Now in paperback, the New York Times bestselling, universally acclaimed, “majesterial,”* beautifully written “biography” of cancer—“a compulsively readable, surprisingly uplifting, and vivid tale…that makes science not merely intelligible, but thrilling” ( O, The Oprah Magazine ).

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.

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. From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive—and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease.

Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments offering hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.

As The Washington Post said, “It’s time to welcome a new star in the constellation of great writer-doctors. With this fat, enthralling, juicy, scholarly, wonderfully written history of cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee vaults into that exalted company.”