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A review by podanotherjessi
The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human by Siddhartha Mukherjee
hopeful
informative
slow-paced
This book had a lot of elements that I understand, but that annoyed me nonetheless.
First, Mukherjee does a remarkable job through most of this book of explaining complex biological topics in ways most people will understand. This is really good, and I commend him for it. That said, he fails to do this at points in the book, largely in the introduction. I have a biology background, and even I found myself lost with the jargon he was throwing around at the beginning of the book.
But on the other hand, the first 20, maybe 30 percent of the book is dedicated to explaining what a cell is and where it comes from. And this section to me felt too rudimentary. It was information, in my experience, that anyone with a high school level science education would already know. I understand needing to include this as background because if you didn't understand those things, much of the rest of the book would have been incomprehensible. But I think it could have been condensed to keep things moving.
Second, almost all of the modern examples are pulled from Mukherjee's personal experience. If the case studies weren't of people he treated himself, they were close friends of his, or someone treated by a doctor he went to med school with or did a post-doc with. And if they somehow didn't fit those, it was someone he had met, and he used an anecdote about that meeting as a jumping off point to talk about their condition.
This is likely a practical issue of patient confidentiality, but it came off as slightly braggadocios. It read, to me, as if Mukherjee was using these examples to show off his brilliance. I'm positive that was not his intent, but it was the feeling I was left with anyway.
Third, I wish that so much of this book hadn't been focused on cancer specifically. In retrospect, that was the topic Mukherjee was clearly most interested in exploring, and that's alright. I just wish it had been clear earlier. I wanted to hear about other things - and there are other diseases that are briefly touched on, but none so much as cancer. Covid, the part I was perhaps most curious about, was given barely any attention, having the shortest section.
But there's a lot to really recommend this book. I loved the historic background whenever that was the focus. As I said, Mukherjee does a remarkable job making the material accessible. So I do think anyone interested in cellular biology and how medicine is advancing (specifically as it pertains to cancer), I would recommend picking this up! But not the audiobook. The narrator's pronunciations in parts were really rough. Especially when it came to words in other languages. I never want to hear Boutsikaris try to say anything in German ever again.
First, Mukherjee does a remarkable job through most of this book of explaining complex biological topics in ways most people will understand. This is really good, and I commend him for it. That said, he fails to do this at points in the book, largely in the introduction. I have a biology background, and even I found myself lost with the jargon he was throwing around at the beginning of the book.
But on the other hand, the first 20, maybe 30 percent of the book is dedicated to explaining what a cell is and where it comes from. And this section to me felt too rudimentary. It was information, in my experience, that anyone with a high school level science education would already know. I understand needing to include this as background because if you didn't understand those things, much of the rest of the book would have been incomprehensible. But I think it could have been condensed to keep things moving.
Second, almost all of the modern examples are pulled from Mukherjee's personal experience. If the case studies weren't of people he treated himself, they were close friends of his, or someone treated by a doctor he went to med school with or did a post-doc with. And if they somehow didn't fit those, it was someone he had met, and he used an anecdote about that meeting as a jumping off point to talk about their condition.
This is likely a practical issue of patient confidentiality, but it came off as slightly braggadocios. It read, to me, as if Mukherjee was using these examples to show off his brilliance. I'm positive that was not his intent, but it was the feeling I was left with anyway.
Third, I wish that so much of this book hadn't been focused on cancer specifically. In retrospect, that was the topic Mukherjee was clearly most interested in exploring, and that's alright. I just wish it had been clear earlier. I wanted to hear about other things - and there are other diseases that are briefly touched on, but none so much as cancer. Covid, the part I was perhaps most curious about, was given barely any attention, having the shortest section.
But there's a lot to really recommend this book. I loved the historic background whenever that was the focus. As I said, Mukherjee does a remarkable job making the material accessible. So I do think anyone interested in cellular biology and how medicine is advancing (specifically as it pertains to cancer), I would recommend picking this up! But not the audiobook. The narrator's pronunciations in parts were really rough. Especially when it came to words in other languages. I never want to hear Boutsikaris try to say anything in German ever again.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer and Medical content
Moderate: Death