Perhaps this isn't a title which would catch your eye in a bookstore - The Emperor Of All Maladies: A Biography Of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee - but I can highly recommend it. It was a Christmas present (ha! Having trouble deciding what to get the recently diagnosed in your life, how about a 571 page history on cancer?) but I just got around to reading it last week.
It is an incredible book with many fascinating aspects - a history of cancer, from the first time it was mentioned in human history through the creation of the NCI to the present.
It is very well written and is one of the most empathetic accounts, by a doctor, of what a patient experiences that I've read anywhere.
It is inspiring to read how far we've come in treating and understanding cancer yet it is the alternate subtext, how little we truly know about the disease, that stays with you after finishing the book.
Something tells me that that we are going to view radiation therapy like blood letting and leeches in twenty years.
The author did an excellent interview on Fresh Air in November.
http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=11-17-2010
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