MixedThe TelegraphMukherjee conveys the emotional burden carried by a cancer specialist whose daily routine brings him close to people who may be about to die ... This blood-and-guts volume is brightened by a handsome photograph of the oncologist looking like a Bollywood film star. Yet his book, though named by The New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2010, is not an easy read, especially for the British eye. Its scientific explanations are interposed awkwardly and its pages spattered with abbreviations such as VAMP, CML and GIST and indigestible phrases such as \'myc, neu, fos, et, akt are all oncogenes, while ‘VHL’ and ‘APC’ are tumour suppressors\'. The book is unashamedly American in origin, spelling and statistics. We are told at the start that \'in 2010, about 600,000 Americans, and more than seven million humans around the world, will die of cancer\'. n its historical sweep, however, the book succeeds.
