2011 Pulitzer goes to Indian-American
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Rarely have the science and poetry of illness been so elegantly brided together as they are in this erudite, engrossing, kind book Mukherjee's clienical wisdom never erases the personal tragedies which are its occasion; indeed, he locates with meticulous clarity and profound compassion the beautiful hope buried in cancer's ravages.
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The Emperor of All Maladies - A Noble book
Mr. Mukherjee yanks you by the elbow and takes you through a roller coaster of a ride through the troughs and peaks of failures and successes in man's quest for the holy grail of medicine, the elusive cure for Cancer. Spanning almost 4000 years from the first references during the times of the Pharaohs to 2008, the epic journey covers the attempts to eradicate Cancer by the surgeons, the chemists, the radiologists and lastly the geneticists.
ReplyDeleteEvery blind alley has led to small openings, which have helped to unravel the mystery of this malignant disease and the recent successes with genetic research and early detection has helped increase the survival rates. But the battle is far from over, if one is to go by Mr. Mukherjee's passionate account.
An excellent example of how to take medical science to the layman, I hope that this book will also inspire a large number of India's youngsters to pursue careers in research related to cancer.