Author's Note

preface
Part 1: “Black, Unboiling”
Part 2: A Hasty War
Part 3: If I don't get better, will you end my life?
Part 4: Prevention is the cure
Part 5: “Distorted Forms of Our Normal Self”
Part 6: The Fruit of Long Labor
War of Atossa

Acknowledgements
main
Glossary of Terms
References
Image source
Translator's Note
Biographical Index

Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction!
Selected as a "Book of the Year" in the nonfiction category by the New York Times Book Review in 2010
New York Times Book Review Nonfiction Bestseller
Amazon Bestseller
Cancer has existed alongside humans for over 5,000 years, and the history of all humans who have fought to conquer it!

As an oncologist and physician who has seen cancer and cancer patients from the closest angle, this first book by Siddhartha Mukherjee created a lot of buzz and received widespread media acclaim upon its publication in the United States.
It was also a New York Times Book Review and Amazon bestseller, and won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize.
While studying cancer and meeting cancer patients, Mukherjee began to question whether cancer was truly an inseparable entity from us and whether we could conquer it. He set out to understand what cancer really was, that is, its true nature.
The author dissects everything about cancer, sometimes through the true stories of cancer patients he personally treated, and sometimes through the history of cancer itself.
It also tells the stories of success and frustration of countless doctors and patients in their battle against cancer.
This book is not an academic book filled with the names of genes, DNA, diseases, and drugs related to cancer.
While previous books on cancer have focused on how to overcome, treat, and conquer cancer, this book is the first and best educational book that explains how cancer begins and how to understand it.
Through this book, readers will learn how to prepare for the future we will live with cancer.


Main contents of this book
“Few works weave the science and poetry of disease so elegantly as this encyclopedic and engaging book.” —Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Blues

In 2010, more than 7 million people worldwide will die from cancer, and about 15 percent of the world's population will die from cancer, and in some countries, cancer will surpass heart disease as the most common cause of death.
Siddhartha Mukherjee, an oncologist and physician who studies and treats these cancers, feels that cancer has consumed his entire life, permeating his every conversation and thought as he works as an oncologist.
He realizes that while cancer is deeply ingrained in him as a doctor, for his patients it is erasing their very lives.
Meanwhile, Mukherjee feels a greater and more persistent question about cancer.
How old has cancer been? Where are we in the "war" against it? Is there an end? Can we win this war? This book is an attempt to answer these fundamental questions about cancer, a disease so close to us now that no one can be certain of escaping it.


Part 1, “Black, Unboiling,” covers leukemia and the first tumors found in actual mummies, as well as the accounts of early physicians who encountered cancer, such as Hippocrates, Galen, Vesalius, and Bailey.
John Bennett, a 19th-century physician who encountered leukemia, described it as a blood festering disease.
Pirhod names leukemia and describes it at the cellular level.
And in the 1940s, Sydney Faber began his fight against leukemia with chemicals, experiencing success and failure along the way.
Part 2, "Rapid Wars," follows Faber's battle with cancer, which began with his encounter with Mary Lasker, the so-called fairy godmother of medical research, and the development of chemotherapy treatments at Bethesda's research institute.
The chemotherapy treatments of Zubrod, Freireich, and Frey achieved early victories, and the Laskerists mobilized the entire nation in the war against cancer.


Part 3, “If I Don’t Get Better, Will You End My Life?” shows the alternating cycle of cancer treatment through surgery and chemotherapy.
Surgical cancer treatment, which was developed by Halstead, an authority on radical mastectomy in the field of breast cancer, has limitations in that it causes terrible disfigurement and has inconsistent effectiveness.
As a result, multi-agent chemotherapy treatment is once again being revived, but the side effects and effectiveness of the treatment are also negative.
Part 4: Prevention is Cure explains cancers that have a clear correlation, such as scrotal cancer caused by soot and lung cancer caused by cigarette smoking.
The tobacco industry's dirty tricks to avoid being labeled as a carcinogen, which began in the 1950s, and the legal battles of cancer patients and lawyers trying to expose them continued into the 1990s.
Meanwhile, Papanicolaou creates a groundbreaking test called the Pap smear test, which can detect cervical cancer early.


Part 5, “Distorted Forms of Our Normal Self,” tells the story of the hunt for viral genes and oncogenic viruses.
Temin, Spiegelman, Weinberg, and Dreyer go further, going to the cellular and chromosomal levels, to explain the process of cancer development caused by genetic mutations in DNA.
Part 6: The Fruits of Long Effort tells us that various methods from various fields, including chemicals, surgery, radiation, and genetic testing, which were used as tools to treat cancer, have all played their own roles in the war against cancer.
Describing current cancer medicine as advancing into two fields of cancer treatment and cancer prevention, he redefines the war against cancer as not eradication but victory in it together for our generation, who will continue to fight against cancer in the future.


Praise poured in for this book

Mukherjee's books maximize the joy of reading.
Today, cancer is widely recognized as the worst disease that can affect humans.
Because it is rapidly becoming the most common disease.
Mukherjee explains how this perception came about, how cancer has been perceived over the years, and what is being done to treat its various forms.
With this book, he joins the ranks of a small group of doctors who can not only talk about their field but also write about it.
—Tony Judt, author of Imagine a Postwar and a Better Life

Siddhartha Mukherjee did the impossible.
He has written an authoritative history of cancer for the general reader while continuing to tell the story of cancer patients with a close heart.
This book, erudite yet critical, humane without being sentimental, is a masterpiece among the most precious works.
―David Leaf, author of The Death of a Mother

“Chad, this book brilliantly describes the nature of cancer from the patient’s perspective and how basic research has opened the door to understanding this disease.
—Burt Mogelstein, Director of the Ludwig Center at Johns Hopkins University

A work of unparalleled comprehensiveness… …written with a heart overflowing with love.
—George Canelos, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School