It's not hard to see why The Emperor of All Maladies was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. It is an engrossing and powerful history of cancer and a fascinating journey through the development of modern medicine. I learned so much from this book and feel like I have a much better understanding of the nature of cancer and the importance of its role in modern life.

This book is so jam-packed with interesting stories and information, it's hard to know where to begin. I will just mention a few key portions of the book that I found to be especially interesting. First, I was fascinated to learn that doctors and researchers developed various cancer therapies over a period of more than a century (surgery, radiation, chemotherapy) without having even a rudimentary understanding of the basic way that cancer works in the cell. Second, I was shocked by the story of the radical mastectomy, especially since my grandmother had this operation performed on her. Third, I was intrigued by the important relationship between the AIDS epidemic, cancer research, and the birth of the patient advocacy movement.

Fourth, I really enjoyed learning about the development of modern medical research tools such as the randomized clinical trial -- these types of research tools are much more complicated than I ever imagined. Fifth, I was very interested by the long and agonizing tale of the medical establishment's growing understanding of the relationship between cigarette smoking and cancer and the political and corporate resistance to enacting public health measures to warn consumers of the dangers.

In fact, I found the information about the slow and evolving understanding by doctors and researchers of cancer's environmental causes to be extremely interesting and somewhat surprising. And of course, in recent years, our understanding of cancer has become even more refined as we now know that cancer is basically a genetic disease (or actually, many genetic diseases). I found the section in the book on genetics to be the most difficult to understand, but I definitely came away with a better understanding of the complexities of treating cancer.

I listened to this book as an audiobook. My only complaint -- and it's a minor one -- is that I didn't care for the reader's voice very much. He was not terrible, and it wouldn't keep me from recommending it, but he certainly wasn't one of my favorite audiobook readers. (His reading style was rather stiff and formal.)

This is a fabulous book and I highly recommend it to anyone who would like to learn more about this important disease and how it has impacted human society and medical science.