The Song of the Cell
  • Published: 3 December 2022
  • ISBN: 9781847925978
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $69.99

The Song of the Cell

An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

Formats & editions
Paperback
5 Dec 2023
Tr. Paperback
1 Nov 2022
Hardback
3 Dec 2022
Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Find local retailers Find local retailers Abbeys Angus & Robertson Boomerang Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Your Bookstore

From the author of The Emperor of All Maladies, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and The Gene, a #1 New York Times bestseller, comes his most spectacular book yet, about the fundamental unit of life. Rich with Mukherjee's revelatory and exhilarating stories of scientists, doctors, and the patients whose lives may be saved by their work, The Song of the Cell is the third book in this extraordinary writer's exploration of what it means to be human

From the author of The Emperor of All Maladies, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and The Gene, a #1 New York Times bestseller, comes his most spectacular book yet, about the fundamental unit of life. Rich with Mukherjee's revelatory and exhilarating stories of scientists, doctors, and the patients whose lives may be saved by their work, The Song of the Cell is the third book in this extraordinary writer's exploration of what it means to be human.

In the late 1600s, a distinguished English polymath, Robert Hooke, and an eccentric Dutch cloth-merchant, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek look down their hand-made microscopes. What they see introduces a radical concept that sweeps through biology and medicine, touching virtually every aspect of the two sciences, and altering both forever. It is the fact that complex living organisms are assemblages of tiny, self-contained, self-regulating units. Our organs, our physiology, our selves - hearts, blood, brains - are built from these compartments. Hooke christens them "cells".

The discovery of cells -and the reframing of the human body as a cellular ecosystem - announced the birth of a new kind of medicine based on the therapeutic manipulations of cells. A hip fracture, a cardiac arrest, Alzheimer's dementia, AIDS, pneumonia, lung cancer, kidney failure, arthritis, COVID pneumonia - all could be re-conceived as the results of cells, or systems of cells, functioning abnormally. And all could be perceived as loci of cellular therapies.

In The Song of the Cell, Mukherjee tells the story of how scientists discovered cells, began to understand them, and are now using that knowledge to create new humans. He seduces readers with writing so vivid, lucid and suspenseful that complex science becomes thrilling. Told in six parts, laced with Mukherjee's own experience as a researcher, a doctor, and a prolific reader, The Song of the Cell is both panoramic and intimate - a masterpiece.
  • Published: 3 December 2022
  • ISBN: 9781847925978
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $69.99
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher, a stem cell biologist and a cancer geneticist. He is the author of The Laws of Medicine and The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, which won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction and the Guardian First Book Award.

Mukherjee is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University. A Rhodes Scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford, and Harvard Medical School. His laboratory has identified genes that regulate stem cells, and his team is internationally recognized for its discovery of skeletal stem cells and genetic alterations in blood cancers.

He has published work in Nature, Cell, Neuron, The New England Journal of Medicine, the New York Times and several other magazine and journals. He lives with his family in New York City.

portrait photo of Siddhartha Mukherjee

Also by Siddhartha Mukherjee

A Cancer in the Family
The Gene
See all

Praise for The Song of the Cell

Deeply researched, The Song of the Cell is an extraordinary journey through the history of discovery to the most innovative cellular medicine practiced today and the promise of what lies ahead.

Paul Nurse, Nobel Laureate Physiology or Medicine 2001

Part mystery, part adventure story, The Song of the Cell is an irresistible foray into the frontiers of medical science [and] a reminder of the power of human ingenuity that is likely to leave readers both enlightened and hopeful.

Jennifer Egan, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning A Visit from the Goon Squad

An extraordinarily gifted storyteller... The author's ideas about the near future of medicine are both convincing and inspiring. This is another winner from Mukherjee.

Publishers Weekly, *Starred Review*

Brilliant ... medical magic ... written with compassionate warmth and humour

Daily Telegraph

A lively, personal, detailed, often moving account of the cell in medical history and its promise in the present

Heromag

For anyone who wants to understand the building blocks of their own bodies - which everyone surely should - this is an informative and entertaining introduction

Economist

Some of the writing in The Song of the Cell is so lovely that you can get caught up in its music

New York Times

Audacious...mesmerizing...reliably engaging... Mukherjee enthusiastically instructs and... delights - all the while hustling us across a preposterously vast and intricate landscape

Wall Street Journal

A lively, thought-provoking book... Mukherjee comes across not only as a brilliant researcher but also as a deeply empathetic human being

Literary Review

If you are not already in awe of biology, The Song of the Cell might get you there. It is a masterclass

Guardian

A masterclass in cell function that will leave you in awe of biology

Suzanne O'Sullivan, Guardian

Wonderfully ambitious... Cell biology is complex and as big a topic as life itself; I'm not sure a writer could cover it better

The Times

Vast, important ... optimistic

Mail on Sunday

Brilliant

The Times

One of the most admired doctors in the world

The Times

A passionate, expert guide ... Mukherjee's ambition has once again paid off, creating an encyclopaedic exploration of how we got to this point - and sketching out the questions we must ask about the future

Financial Times

A confident, timely - and most importantly, biologically precise - exploration of what it means to be human

Observer

A remarkable achievement - a fascinating and highly readable crash course on the complexities of cellular physiology and of life itself

New Statesman

This complex portrait illuminates cells' roles in immunity, reproduction, sentience, cognition, repair and rejuvenation

Nature

A tour d'horizon of cell theory... part history lesson, part biology lesson and part reminder of how science itself actually proceeds

Economist, *Books of the Year*

This complex portrait illuminates cells' roles in immunity, reproduction, sentience, cognition, repair and rejuvination, malfunctions such as cancer, and treatments such as blood transfusions, drawing on author Siddhartha Mukherjee's varied experience as an immunologist, stem-cell scientist, cancer biologist and medical oncologist

Nature

The book is, at root, a call for a more integrated biology ... What gives The Song of the Cell its persuasiveness in calling for that new vision is precisely that it comes from a clinician steeped in the traditions of genomic and cell biology, and who has seen both the power and limitations of those approaches to produce actual cures

Lancet

What truly elevates the book are Mukherjee's accounts of his experiences as a clinician and the stories of the patients he has encountered. Some are moving, and all are reflective and insightful

Philip Ball, Lancet

All of us will get sick at some point. All of us will have loved ones who get sick. To understand what's happening in those moments - and to feel optimistic that things will get better - it helps to know something about cells, the building blocks of life. Mukherjee's latest book will give you that knowledge ... Mukherjee, who's both an oncologist and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, brings all of his skills to bear in this fantastic book

Bill Gates