"The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer," by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Simon & Schuster, 571 pp.)
In this “biography” of cancer, physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee traces appearances of cancer dating back thousands of years and then works his way up through the 20th-century attempts to cure, control, and conquer the disease. Mukherjee writes that he hopes to "demystify" cancer for his readers.