Looking for something to read over the holidays? Siddhartha Mukherjee has a new book ...
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Mukherjee is an eminent oncologist and the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of
expansive study of the cell—the common denominator of all life—and its dizzying range
of types and functions. He studies neurons, the cells involved in reproduction,
and rampant cancers, and gestures toward a future in which cell engineering could
eradicate diseases and transform medicine. Cells are anything but simple structures;
rather, they’re sinuous ecosystems, and they come together at a dazzling scale in the
body. Blood, for example, is “a cosmos of cells. The restless ones: red blood cells …The healers: tiny platelets … The defenders, the discerners: B cells that make antibody
missiles; T cells, door-to-door wanderers that can detect even the whiff of an invader.”
Using that twirling prose, he braids history with science; we meet pivotal figures such as
the quirky Dutch autodidact Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (who first glimpsed what he called
“animalcules” through his microscope) and contemporary Nobel laureates ensconced
in their labs, testing gene-editing technologies. Understanding the cell is the key to an
age of personalized medicine, Mukherjee argues: Are we ready to embrace it?
Blurb from Seven Books that Will Make You Smarter, The Atlantic.
Find this book on Amazon.
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