The book “The Emperor of All Maladies” by Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee won Pulitzer Prize and was New York Times #1 best seller. An exhaustive account of cancer’s origins, The Emperor of All Maladies illustrates how modern treatments–multi-pronged chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, as well as preventative care–came into existence thanks to a century’s worth of research, trials, and small, essential breakthroughs around the globe. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance but also of hubris, paternalism and misperception. The book is available for purchase in Amazon.

The book was made into a 3 part documentary and was produced by Ken
Burns and directed by Barak Goodman. Episode 1 titled Magic Bullets,
Episode 2 titled The Blind Men and Elephant and Episode 3 titled Finding
the Achilles Heel were screened in March 2015 in PBS. You can learn about these very informative episodes online at http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/cancer-emperor-of-all-maladies/home/ and http://cancerfilms.org/. You can also watch full episodes at http://www.pbs.org/video/2365450686/.

Note: PBS has removed these videos and they are no longer available.