From the origins of cancer on the scrolls of ancient Egyptian medical records to the epic modern battles to conquer it, Siddhartha Mukherjee, a leading cancer physician and researcher, brings the history of cancer to wild and terrifying life. Mukherjee provides a window in to key figures such as Sidney Farber, the father of modern chemotherapy, holed up in the cellar of a Boston hospital and characterized by a colleague as a "cancer maniac," and William Halsted, bewhiskered, obsessive, and addicted to cocaine, who created and perfected the radical and super-radical surgeries that would become the norm in cases of breast cancer. Ten years in the making, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES: A Biography of Cancer is a "biography" of this shape-shifting and formidable disease that has plagued and riddled humanity since the beginning of civilization.
