The Emperor of All Maladies

This epochal book is a comprehensive, vividly narrated, and scientifically grounded history of humanity's relationship with cancer, against which personal stories of the war with the “emperor of all maladies” unfold. By guiding the reader through changing perceptions of this disease in different eras, treatment methods, milestones in understanding its mechanisms, and interests' conflicts surrounding it, the author reveals the reasons for the limited victories over it and outlines realistic contours of coexistence with it in the future. The timeless dreams of a magic pill for cancer on the pages of the book are confronted by an enemy, so insidious because it closely resembles distorted reflections of ourselves in its biological perfection.