When the woman he loved was diagnosed with a metastatic cancer, science writer George Johnson embarked on a journey to learn everything he could about the disease and the people who dedicate their lives to understanding and combating it. What he discovered is a revolution under way—an explosion of new ideas about what cancer really is and where it comes from. In a provocative and intellectually vibrant exploration, he takes us on an adventure through the history and recent advances of cancer research that will challenge everything you thought you knew about the disease. Deftly excavating and illuminating decades of investigation and analysis, he reveals what we know and don’t know about cancer, showing why a cure remains such a slippery concept. We follow him as he combs through the realms of epidemiology, clinical trials, laboratory experiments, and scientific hypotheses—rooted in every discipline from evolutionary biology to game theory and physics. Cogently extracting fact from a towering canon of myth and hype, he describes tumors that evolve like alien creatures inside the body, paleo-oncologists who uncover petrified tumors clinging to the skeletons of dinosaurs and ancient human ancestors, and the surprising reversals in science’s comprehension of the causes of cancer, with the foods we eat and environmental toxins playing a lesser role. Perhaps most fascinating of all is how cancer borrows natural processes involved in the healing of a wound or the unfolding of a human embryo and turns them, jujitsu-like, against the body. Throughout his pursuit, Johnson clarifies the human experience of cancer with elegiac grace, bearing witness to the punishing gauntlet of consultations, surgeries, targeted therapies, and other treatments. He finds compassion, solace, and community among a vast network of patients and professionals committed to the fight and wrestles to comprehend the cruel randomness cancer metes out in his own family. For anyone whose life has been affected by cancer and has found themselves asking why?, this book provides a new understanding. In good company with the works of Atul Gawande, Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Abraham Verghese, The Cancer Chronicles is endlessly surprising and as radiant in its prose as it is authoritative in its eye-opening science.

"Don't you ever get tired of being so positive?" my niece blurted out one day. Was my enthusiasm about my remaining treatment options so disheartening that even upbeat Stephanie struggled to see the hope in my situation? Cancer had changed me. I have grown. I've learned to not only survive with lung cancer, but to thrive with it.

There is no available information at this time.

“Not so much poems, more titles gone mad.” The Cancer Chronicles is a collection of thirteen poems by the artist Damien Hirst. Hirst wrote the book to accompany his work Romance in the Age of Uncertainty – Jesus & His Disciples (Death, Martyrdom, Suicide & Ascension), (not illustrated). Each poem shares a title with the installed elements of the piece, which include thirteen steel and glass cabinets each alluding to the life and death of the Apostles. In his first published book of writing Hirst explores in written form some of the motifs that have endured in his work: death, decay, disease and belief. The poems provide further insight into Hirst’s sculptural works, but please do not read this publication whilst listening to the music.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.

Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy. A Penguin Classic First published over forty years ago, The Cancer Journals is a startling, powerful account of Audre Lorde's experience with breast cancer and mastectomy. Long before narratives explored the silences around illness and women's pain, Lorde questioned the rules of conformity for women's body images and supported the need to confront physical loss not hidden by prosthesis. Living as a "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Lorde heals and re-envisions herself on her own terms and offers her voice, grief, resistance, and courage to those dealing with their own diagnosis. Poetic and profoundly feminist, Lorde's testament gives visibility and strength to women with cancer to define themselves, and to transform their silence into language and action.

At some point in the journey that is your life you either have been or will be called upon to steward the terminally ill into the sunset of their lives. Six months with Mommy is a real life chronicle of a son who is shepherded to do just that The book gives the first hand journal account of the peaks and the pitfalls, the hope for miracles and the anguish that comes when there is no hope to speak of; and finally the love and peace that comes when you detach and find a place of acceptance in your life- both as a caregiver and as a person. A must read for all who seek to find the purpose of their own existence.

"Built on her ... Modern Love column, 'When a Couch is More Than a Couch' (9/23/2016), a ... memoir of living meaningfully with 'death in the room' by the 38-year-old great-great-great granddaughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson--mother to two young boys, wife of 16 years--after her terminal cancer diagnosis"--

A surprisingly open memoir co-authored by the married duo of a world class oncologist and a cancer survivor about love, pain, hope, strength and resilience while navigating the overwhelming breast cancer advocacy movement. Off Our Chests recounts the story of Liza and John's experience with her diagnosis and treatment. Written in alternating voices, Liza details her treatment, the complex decisions she had to make throughout her course of chemotherapy and radiation, including clinical trial participation and an elective double mastectomy, the added complexity of being treated at the cancer center of which John was the chief of hematology and oncology, and the emotional impact of knowing she may die as a young woman with young children. John, who lost his own mother to cancer at the age of 13, provides an inside look into the world of cancer care and research, but also the perspective of someone who understands the medicine but who was unprepared for assuming the role of caregiver and worried husband. John adds insights into his world of running the clinical operations of the cancer center where Liza would receive her care, commentary on the breast cancer machine, the need for clinical research, the high cost of cancer care, and an easy to understand explanation of the clinical and scientific background of oncology. While they both felt that they were already expert commentators on their own "Cancer Channel" during the course of Liza's illness, they both came to realize how little understanding they truly had of what a cancer diagnosis does to the patient, caregivers, children, family members, and friends. Liza and John share their most intimate thoughts, including many that were previously unsaid--even between the two of them. Both gain an understanding of the other's life, a deeper appreciation of what it means to be a cancer patient, and of the emotional strains of being an oncologist where so many of the patients die on their watch.

'I have cancer. Cancer does not have me.' Sophie Sabbage was diagnosed with late stage 'incurable' lung cancer in October 2014. She was 48 years old, happily married with a 4-year-old daughter. Since that day - when doctors told Sophie that her prognosis was poor - she has been on a remarkable journey of healing and transformation that has reshaped her vocation as well as changed her life for the better. The Cancer Whisperer chronicles Sophie's extraordinary relationship with cancer and the methods that she has used for dealing with fear, anger, denial and grief. The essence of 'cancer whispering' was born of Sophie's determination to take cancer off the battlefield and into the classroom. Instead of going to war with it, Sophie has chosen to listen to it, learn from it and choose her own response to it. Sophie offers a radically different way of relating to this disease both mentally and practically: she shares the research she has done, the treatments she has chosen, the diet she follows and the resources that she feels have made the biggest differences in the hope that they will help others cut through the mass of information out there. Sophie says: 'This book is for the cancer patient who wants to remain a dignified, empowered human being even when your doctors and diagnosis are scaring the hell out of you. It is also for the cancer patient who has a hunch that there is something for them to learn, gain or even be transformed by - if they just knew how to relate to this disease differently to the way most of society does. It is for the cancer patient, perhaps any patient.'