Some Thoughts on Some Practical Reading

This past week I had the chance to read yet another book I feel should be added to a top ten or twenty list for clergy and lay people helping out in their congregations. This Pulitzer prize winning work contributes to that pool of knowledge from which we draw each and every day of our Christian and professional lives. This book I'm talking about is Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (Scribner's, 2010).

Emperor of All Maladies is exactly what it claims to be. It's the life story of an all too familiar disease that has been known by many names throughout the centuries. It's been described by the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. It's puzzled scientists and medical types for the past 500 years. Only recently have we begun to really understand the process where "normal" cell growth erupts into something terrifying, chaotic, and potentially lethal.

Mukherjee goes beyond the survey of facts and statistics we can find in other places and resources. He tries to get into the "mind" of the disease. He tries to figure out what makes it tick and how it will ultimately find its end. To accomplish this he combines research, personal stories, and case histories from his medical practice. He delves into the historic and scientific literature that has been generated in so many different times and places. He works with and listens to those living with and desperately fighting the cancer that has affected their lives.

It's not always a happy or pleasant read. Making our way through Emperor of All Maladies can be an extremely intense and emotional experience. Perhaps the best reason to pick it up, however, is because it does cover all the bases we need to help, serve and understand people in our lives who are diagnosed with cancer. When friends, family and parishioners tell us what is happening in our lives we can lisen with an informed ear and use this information when caring for them throughout their experience.

The Emperor of All Maladies is an important book and a must read. Given what's happening in each and every one of our lives it's something that should be on every bookshelf and in every office.

Read wisely and fearlessly,
Mike Jones