Jason Furman's Reviews > The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

My guess is I'm not the first person to use the term "magisterial" to describe this so-called "biography" of cancer. In fact I would be surprised if many people had not used the term in their description. It begins with Imhotep's description/diagnosis of cancer and the stark statement that there is nothing that can be done about it. And then it moves forward charting our understanding of the disease, the evolution of the main types of treatment, how we think about the disease, all interspersed with a few stories of his own patients that illustrate many of the larger themes in the book.

I initially thought it was poorly organized and like any historical survey took too long to get to the modern understanding and in particular the molecular biological understanding of cancer. But it eventually got there, in a quite fullsome way, and looking back it was a coherent read and actually an exciting page turner. I just wish we knew how it ends--but that chapter has not been written yet.