Reposting the review because the Audiobook is the Audible Daily Deal for Dec 3 – $5.95
Takeaway: The history of cancer is a good proxy for the history of medicine.
The Emperor of All Maladies deserves all of the praise (and the Pulitzer) it has received.
Like most really good popular non-fiction books, it understands the necessary balance between the presenting facts and telling stories.
Almost every times I started to get slightly bored by the science or history, the author told a story. But the stories never took over the book, they only supplemented the history or science.
What I found most interesting about the book was how often cancer was a part of technical innovation that affected others areas. Medicine was improved because of surgery to removed cancer. Cancer clinical trials were the root of a lot of changes in mathematics, social science research and insurance modeling. Human trials and medical ethics were expanded and changed and re-evaluated throughout medical history in large part because of cancer research.