The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

This book offers a stunning history of cancer--the ways we talk about it, the ways we treat it, the ways we cope with it, and the ways we understand it. The story jumps around a little (from one cancer to another, from one era to another), but overall it creates a compelling portrait that also includes a fair amount about the history of medicine (for example, the development of anesthesiology and the discovery of germs), the history of patient advocacy (changes brought onto the drug trial scene by the AIDS epidemic), the science of cancer (which has grown more nuanced since I was in high-school biology), and several literary references. Several patients' stories anchor the book in the human experience. I really enjoyed this book.