Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Oct 2019
368 pages
Genre: Science, Health and the Environment
Publication Information
A world-class oncologist's devastating and deeply personal examination of cancer.
We have lost the war on cancer. We spend $150 billion each year treating it, yet -- a few innovations notwithstanding -- a patient with cancer is as likely to die of it as one was fifty years ago. Most new drugs add mere months to one's life at agonizing physical and financial cost.
In The First Cell, Azra Raza offers a searing account of how both medicine and our society (mis)treats cancer, how we can do better, and why we must. A lyrical journey from hope to despair and back again, The First Cell explores cancer from every angle: medical, scientific, cultural, and personal. Indeed, Raza describes how she bore the terrible burden of being her own husband's oncologist as he succumbed to leukemia. Like When Breath Becomes Air, The First Cell is no ordinary book of medicine, but a book of wisdom and grace by an author who has devoted her life to making the unbearable easier to bear.
"Intelligence, empathy, and optimism inform the argument for new research on cancer that could obviate the suffering prevalent today." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Raza's deeply personal work brings understanding and empathy to the fore in a way that a purely scientific explication never could." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This book is a passion project, a personal story, a scientific proposal, and quite simply one of the most compelling books you'll read. It breaks out of the standard narrative. It invents a whole new one. It works. By the end you'll want to sign on to her revolution." - Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together and Reclaiming Conversation
"When the history of cancer is eventually written, Azra Raza's book will be one of the touchstones that illuminated the path to victory." - Amanda Foreman, author of The Duchess
"An elegantly conceived, powerfully written, and far-reaching book that will change the conversation around cancer for decades to come." - Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies
"The First Cell is an intricately woven, often lyrical, tapestry of anecdote and authority that returns the suffering patient to the foreground of medical innovation. Raza expertly illustrates the complex choreography of cancer's nefarious dance, and her fascinating proposal will surely thrust cancer therapy from the 20th to the 21st century." - Tina Brown, journalist and author of The Diana Chronicles
This information about The First Cell was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Azra Raza is the Chan Soon-Shiong professor of medicine and the director of the MDS Center at Columbia University. In addition to publishing widely in basic and clinical cancer research, Raza is also the coeditor of the highly acclaimed website 3QuarksDaily.com. She lives in New York City.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
