Writer: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Genre: Non Fiction
No words to describe this marathon of a book! I took almost 2 months to finish it albeit the time frame is owing to my personal laziness :) But seriously it’s amazing to read an oncologist first hand.
The book is an epic about one of the most dreaded diseases - cancer. The first instances of cancer, the radical surgery procedures, the research that goes into identifying the causes, the palliative medicine, etc. almost everything related to the disease is covered in the book. It could well be reference guide for the medical fraternity (or so I think).
One wonders with so much statistics and information what is it that makes the book interesting. It’s the path that cancer cure has taken! From radical surgeries to regimens to palliative medicine....it explores the world of oncology like no one else. And this is precisely where it scores. Many of my friends kept the book down mid-way but for me every time I picked it up, it seemed to tell me something new that invoked a surprise. For example, that there was an advertisement which read - 'More doctors smoke Camel' in the 1960s advocating safe use of cigarettes took me by surprise .The last tobacco ad was aired only on Jan 1, 1971 which made me realize that this dreaded disease was not even linked to the biggest carcinogen till 1960's. Things like these were a sure page turner.
The book is huge and there is a fifty-fifty chance that normal readers would like it but if you want to try something unusual it’s worth a try!
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