This is one of the best books I have read. Depressing, intense, detailed, thorough, free-flowing and reflective. The book pulls the people from the history of medicine (or sceince itself) into a living narrative putting together pieces of apparently disjunct and inconspicuous and serendipitous events in the lives of cancer patients, researchers, doctors, surgeons, scientists and poets and presents it as as if a coherent story could be made of it and read out over a fireplace. Perhaps one of the few books of this genre that I have read that went so smoothly. Continue reading →