The Emperor of All Maladies - a biography of cancer that earns the title

Such a complicated, deep topic to cover in one book! And yet this is one of the top non fiction books I’ve ever read. Easy 5 stars.

I picked it up because I heard it was really well written and I’m interested in health. Both turned out to be true. I’m amazed at how dense with information this book is while staying so easy to read. If you ever wanted to understand cancer, this book provides an overview of almost everything you would need to know. Why there are so many forms of cancer and why some are comparatively deadly. The stages of cancer, how chemo works, the discovery of radiotherapy, and the surgical procedures used to handle cancer. Even some newer methods of targeting specific cancers with specific hormones and drugs, that have far fewer side effects than chemotherapy.

Some of it still comes to mind years later. The radical mastectomy was crazy. So was the whole chemotherapy explanation. And the explanation of leukaemia, how you end up with white blood, was eye opening. I also loved that the author spent a lot of time on how the scientific method developed around cancer, which fed straight into my interest in the psychological aspects of the scientific method.

The book genuinely changed how I think about cancer. It made me realise how different each form of cancer is, actually understand chemotherapy, and appreciate the history of treatment.

Who should read it? Anyone who wants to know more about cancer. It’s expertly constructed to keep the reader interested and deliver all the information you could need.