The Song Of The Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The author is a gifted story teller who manages to make the complex understandable, and this book is no exception. If you are not already in awe of biology, this book might get you there. It is a masterclass in how cells function and malfunction. Consider a virus replicating inside a cell, invisible to the body’s immune system and therefore able to multiply unchecked. How is it possible that the body’s defenses, living as they do entirely outside the cell, can detect the alien presence within? The explanation is at once wonderous as well as detailed. He is not so much dumbing it down as breaking it apart into digestible pieces, interwoven with the history of how we know what we know. He also uses sometimes salutary and engaging stories to teach both the fundamentals of cell biology, but also to illustrate that no one individual is responsible for the advancements in science. Rather, progress is made in a series of often unwitting collaborations. A story told by a milkmaid about her clear skin might be the reason we have vaccines: the protection offered by cowpox infection against smallpox led Edward Jenner to perform the first inoculation on his non-consenting gardener’s son. The author is an oncologist, and so no small part of the book, which marvels at the cell and it's resulting human, it also seeks to educate on the state of the art of treating cancer. Cancer cells defy the processes that are supposed to keep them in check. Like viruses, they find ways to evade our defenses so that they can multiply out of control. He uses seminal medical cases and others from his personal and working life to illustrate how we have learned to harness the natural talents of the immune system to fight rogue cells. All in all, this is a marvel, and it could be required reading by all high school seniors before they launch into the world as adults prepared for what lays ahead.