The Death of Cancer (2015)

by Vincent DeVita

This is a very readable and informative book by a medical scientist who has been in the field for the past 50 years.  It is blends facts and anecdotes in an entertaining and educational manner.  It will appeal to patients, their families. educators and practitioners.

In her NY Times review, Abby Zuger wrote:
Now 80, a professor at Yale and one of the nation’s premier oncologists, Dr. DeVita has produced, with the help of his daughter, an utterly absorbing memoir, fierce and frank. Ears will burn, memories will doubtless differ on a few counts, and even his take on the particulars of cancer treatment may provoke debate. But the average reader will come away from the book with a superb basic education in all things oncological, from events on the cellular level to those in the rooms where research agendas are settled and checks are written.

The Death of Cancer is a great companion piece to Mukherjee’s “The Emperor of All Maladies."

A Little Life

By Hanya Yanagihara (Doubleday). Love it or not, this was one of 2015’s big books, a dense and hefty drama following a close-knit group of male friends through triumph and adversity. Mostly adversity: The book’s universe revolves around Jude, a mysterious wounded bird who has been hurt so deeply that it takes Ms. Yanagihara 720 pages to explain him. Overwrought but indelible.

(This was a hard book to read.  However, it gives much insight into what Anna Luis Kirkengen calls, "The Lived Experience of Violation.")