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A review by peripetia
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
4.0
This was my "listen when nothing else is available" audiobook for months. I have always been interested in the history of medicine, but this book is quite heavy, so I listened to it in bits and pieces.
The topic was not easy and I probably missed many important parts, but even with my incomplete understanding, I thought this was a pretty phenomenal undertaking - and I'm obviously not the only one. It's remarkable how accessible Mukherjee managed to make this book.
What I liked was that this book didn't just recite the same stories you hear all the time, but also challenged some notions we have (for example, is radical surgery really a good idea, how much does early detection actually help). The writing was a little bit flowery for my taste sometimes, taking into account the topic, but it did make the book more accessible, which is great.
The topic was not easy and I probably missed many important parts, but even with my incomplete understanding, I thought this was a pretty phenomenal undertaking - and I'm obviously not the only one. It's remarkable how accessible Mukherjee managed to make this book.
What I liked was that this book didn't just recite the same stories you hear all the time, but also challenged some notions we have (for example, is radical surgery really a good idea, how much does early detection actually help). The writing was a little bit flowery for my taste sometimes, taking into account the topic, but it did make the book more accessible, which is great.