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In Review: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
By Siddhartha Mukherjee
As Reviewed by Chad Felix
Yes, The Emperor of All Maladies is an extensive biography of cancer. No, it’s not boring. As audacious and potentially long-winded as the book could be, author and cancer physician Siddhartha Mukherjee has handled his subject’s density with great success. In this book he writes with the precision of a surgeon, the scope of an epic poet, the unabated intrigue of a detective, and the earnest enthusiasm of a person who works every day within the field. The result is an astute adventure story that presents not only the cold hard facts, but also the warm, beating pulse of unaffected passion–a sentiment that will seduce even the most precarious of readers.
The book is wisely divided into six parts, with each further subdivided into digestible chapters. Each section is then introduced with a pertinent quotation from a wide variety of personalities–from Lewis Carroll to Sun Tzu–selected and placed to provide real life perspectives on the disease. The effect is felt and readers will be grateful for it. Not once did I dread another page of text or feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the matters at hand, and thanks to concise descriptions and a glossary of terms, one need not understand medical terminology or procedures to enjoy this book from cover to cover.
Where the book truly shines is in its people and the history they’ve been a part of. The wide cast of characters–afflicted patients, recovered patients, politicians, activists, researchers, doctors, etc.–is in constant interaction with the uncompromising disease. Their reaction? To be equally uncompromising. Take the late-19th century surgeon William Stewart Halsted, for example, whose extreme procedures left patients physically debilitated for the remainder of their lives. Convinced that even more radical surgeries were needed, Halsted trekked on, spending many years of his professional life addicted to drugs that allowed him to work longer days and later nights.
Marching on through a barrage of colorful characters, Mukherjee gives us detailed insight into just how turbulent the search for a cure has been and will likely continue to be. In addition to being in conflict with cancer, the search party of patients and professionals has frequently been fraught with conflict in itself. When researchers were conducting the required trials of new and potentially groundbreaking drugs, activists demanded that those afflicted weren’t getting their treatments fast enough. When smoking was found as a link to lung cancer, a long, semantic standoff took place between the scientific community and the powerful tobacco industry. And when professionals in radical surgery got wind of more effective treatments, they often put their heads down and continued work as usual, despite evidence that their procedures were growing obsolete.
More than anything else, The Emperor of All Maladies’ greatness is propelled by the exhilarating triumphs of discovery. Sure, in 1600 B.C. Egyptian scribe Imhotep wrote of cancer’s cure: “there is none,” but today we can be much more optimistic. Whether by surgery, chemotherapy or otherwise, there are treatments capable of curing certain types of cancer.
With this exploration into cancer’s mysteries, Mukherjee does everything in his power to pin it down for a large audience. The result is a thrilling chase through time after an ever-changing portrait of an adapting chameleon and complex villain. Thankfully–due to years of hard work–we now have an increasing number of heroes. The Emperor of All Maladies is a tribute to both heroes and villains, and Mukherjee has done a brilliant job of making such an emotionally and intellectually charged battle such a pleasure to read.
