This book is one of the most gripping book I've read on my year-long sabbatical.

Mukherjee masterfully weaves together the different threads spun by cancer into a coherent and engaging narrative whole. He documents humanity's relentless trials and tribulations over centuries to develop effective medical treatments for this "emperor of maladies", all while trying to map and understand the terra incognita of its diverse biology. At the same time, he veers out of the technical to confront the social, political and personal dimensions of cancer, reminding us that it is intractably tied to the human condition—born in our very genome, but sculpted by the myriad environmental forces that define our lived experience in the world.

In sum, this is a weighty book, a superb attempt to craft a biography of an equally weighty subject—a literal mass that humanity will likely have to continue carrying, confronting and countering for generations to come.