The Laws of Medicine - Siddhartha Mukherjee

Siddhartha Mukherjee is very smart, very thoughtful, and a very talented writer, with an ear for the telling anecdote.  (We have previously reviewed his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies).  The Laws of Medicine is a focused reflection on how medicine has changed over the past 80 years, viewed through the lens of Mukherjee's desire to identify "laws", specific to medicine, that govern its practice.

The book is serious and thought-provoking but also rather charming....and it's a fast read.  It's definitely a library book, not a worthwhile purchase - it's almost pocket-sized, it's thin, and it has some lovely textless illustrated pages to add space for personal reflection between one chapter and the next.  Purchasing it ($16.99) would be a good way to support the TED Talks (from which this book was adapted), but I was happier to delight in Mukherjee's reflections, on the library's dime!  To offer a little substance to this review, here's a nice thought, snatched from the book:

Priors. Outliers. Biases.  That all three laws of medicine involve limits and constraints on human knowledge is instructive.

I definitely recommend this highly.

The Emperor of All Maladies

My bookclub's most recent book (recommended to me by dad) is The Emperor of All Maladies, an unusual piece of nonfiction which reads like a novel, and which the author calls a "biography of cancer." This tale spans the entire known "life" of the disease(s) we call cancer, from the earliest ancient references (Herodotus recorded the strange tale of the Persian Queen Atossa's breast cancer) to the latest advances in medicine and technology. Mukherjee is a masterful storyteller (and a wise person), and weaves a riveting and at times heartbreaking tale of the hundreds of years of scientific inquiry (and ignorant butchery) which form the largest part of cancer's story. It is a frightening tale but ultimately a hopeful one, and I highly recommend this surprising page turner to all.

Dad's review here.

The Emperor of All Maladies

A 608 page book that describes the history of cancer research and treatment sounds like a dry-as-dust sedative.  But, this Pulitzer Prize-winning book by physician-scientist Siddhartha Mukherjee is anything but! Dr. Mukherjee subtitles his book "A Biography of Cancer," and this subtitle accurately conveys how Mukherjee characterizes the "personality" of cancer as it has been perceived over the ages.  The book also discusses changes in ideas of how cancer should be treated, especially focusing on instances when those ideas, though wholly incorrect, were persuasively, even dogmatically championed by accomplished and articulate physicians and researchers.  The scholarship is impressive, but first and foremost, this is an immensely readable and thoughtful consideration of a menacing, devastating, yet fascinating disease.  Very highly recommended!