clear, concise, easy to read, very informative, and phrased in ways I will remember the information. no two cancers are the same, but they all have similarities. so while a certain treatment may work best in one type of cancer, it may still have impacts on others. ( )

An interesting discussion of cancer: what it is, why it happens, and why a cure is so elusive. ( )

A very good primer on the disease. He's very pragmatic, very realistic, and quite explanatory about the complexity of it all, and to what we can probably attribute, and not-attribute, the causes and origins. Johnson also strikes you as the kind of person with a truckload of information on his head. A smart book, written by a smart man. The book also expresses hopefulness in what seems to me to be the appropriate measure. Underlying the surface is the message that it's not your fault, which is the most affirming thought for anyone who suffers, who is, indeed, blameless. ( )

This was one of the easiest books on cancer for me to read. I found it informative and in certain ways comforting. The concept that there's more cancer these days because we're not dying from other diseases and that there are dinosaur skeletons with signs of cancer.

I was a cancer patient, I was lucky, I responded in a textbook fashion to chemotherapy regime I was put on. My lottery ticked may have been stamped by the glandular fever I had earlier in my life (apparently all patients who have Hodgkins Lymphoma had glandular fever but not all people who get glandular fever get Hodgkins), by the genetics that link geeks in our family with cancer (stomach - grandfather; liver - uncle) or the environmental issues with having worked late shifts and living for a few years in a bustling city centre. Whatever happened I had cancer, some books make me very stressed but this book reasured me that there are people working on this and trying to find solutions to ensure that future generations won't suffer from this.

Through the science he also weaves the story of his wife's cancer. Her treatment and the aftermath and the afterword including his brother's cancer. It's touching in parts and you can see his path to try to understand this while his wife is going through all the trauma of treatment and testing and heartbreak. You can see how he's trying to understand this and trying, in the face of a situation where he has no power or agency over this thing that's happening.

I found it a compelling read and would recommend it to almost everyone. ( )

George Johnson opens his book, on the page preceding chapter one, with an epigraph from Reynolds Price's memoir about his own struggle with cancer that left him in a paraplegic state. I mention this because I was moved by my reading of Price's book almost two decades ago and, while it was an eloquent expression of the experience of cancer it did not, as I remember, inform me significantly about the nature of the disease itself. With The Cancer Chronicles George Johnson, a writer whose book Fire in the Mind impressed me several years ago, shares both the history and nature of the disease called Cancer and a memoir of his wife's own battle with that disease.
The history of cancer begins very far back in prehistoric times for it seems that scientists have found that the disease was already present in the age of Dinosaurs. This revelation along with others made the book both informative and interesting to read. His chronicle of the history of the science of cancer explores the realms of epidemiology. clinical trials, laboratory experiments while sharing information from evolutionary biology and other sciences. Even the economics of the Cancer research juggernaut is described -- an industry that has grown to an immense size in the search for an elusive "cure" for cancer.
Cancer the disease is at the core of the book and permeates the narrative, but the chronicles reveal what is in reality multiple different diseases. Each cancer affects different parts of the body and different groups of humans in unique ways. This is an important part of the story and represents some of the basis for many of the obstacles scientists continue to face in analyzing how to stop or prevent the disease.
Johnson capably personalizes the story with interludes where he shares his wife's struggle with Cancer. In doing this he reveals a view of the disease from the point of view of the everyday person who must deal with the practicalities of diagnoses and treatments and hospital stays. For those of us who have family or close friends who have had the experience of this disease the narrative is a moving personal story. I also appreciated the literary allusions whether explicit, like the reference to Solzhenitsyn's masterpiece Cancer Ward, or implicit. The author is eloquent both in his telling analysis of the disease and in his personal memoir; he demonstrates an ability to convey scientific concepts lucidly enough for the layman to understand. These characteristics and the fascination that the author shares for scientific discovery make this a great book full of insights into the deep mysteries of some of the most complex areas of modern medicine. ( )