The Emperor of All Maladies

The Emperor of All Maladies
Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 624
Release: 2011-08-09
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1439170916

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.

The Life of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton

The Life of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton
Author: David Bruce
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2013-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0739183389

The social conscience of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786-1845) developed as he operated a brewery in Spitalfields, nineteenth-century London’s poorest parish. His interest and research on penal discipline brought him national prominence and led to a parliamentary career that lasted nearly two decades. Buxton’s association with noted activist William Wilberforce led to his own involvement in the anti-slavery movement, a cause he fiercely championed, resulting in Britain’s abolition of slavery in 1834. Buxton’s involvement in the disastrous 1841 Niger expedition effectively ended his public career and paved the way to British imperialism in Africa. A man of many interests, Buxton also supported Catholic emancipation and ending the Hindu suttee. Few nineteenth-century social reformers have had as much of an impact or have cast as long a shadow as Buxton. At the time of his death, many saw him as the epitome of Christian activism, yet today Buxton remains largely ignored and forgotten. David Bruce examines the life of one of Great Britain’s most prominent social activists. Using his personal papers, and the papers and books of his friends, associates, and contemporaries, The Life of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton paints a portrait of a unique individual driven to improve his world.

Culture and Anarchy

Culture and Anarchy
Author: Matthew Arnold
Publisher: BookRix
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2019-06-28
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 3736811152

Culture and Anarchy is a series of essays by Matthew Arnold. According to his view advanced in the book, "Culture is a study of perfection". His often quoted phrase "[culture is] the best which has been thought and said" comes from the Preface to Culture and Anarchy: The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically. The book contains most of the terms - culture, sweetness and light, Barbarian, Philistine, Hebraism, and many others - which are more associated with Arnold's work influence.