The Cancer Chronicles
Unlocking Medicine’s Deepest Mystery
284 pages
By George Johnson
“The Cancer Chronicles” joins a pack of recent excellent books on cancer—“The Emperor of All Maladies,” by Siddhartha Mukherjee; “The Philadelphia Chromosome,” by Jessica Wapner; and “The Truth in Small Doses,” by Clifton Leaf. But, as David Quammen wrote in The New York Times Book Review, this new book by George Johnson, “stands out as especially illuminating, forceful and, in its own quiet way, profound.”
Johnson writes from two perspectives: as a reporter explaining what cancer is and how it occurs, and as the husband of someone struck by uterine cancer. The scientific story he tells is—no small feat—comprehensible and illuminating. But the beating heart of this book is his personal narrative, which serves as a sad reminder of the deeply human toll exacted by a disease that will touch almost all of our lives.
The Sports Gene
Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance
352 pages
By David Epstein
As a collegiate runner, David Epstein often tested himself against his training partner. Epstein was a walk-on “who squeezed drops of improvement out of a talent-dry rock of a body.” Meanwhile, his partner, the son of two former track stars, cruised through practices with apparent ease. “I just had to be tougher than him,” Epstein told himself, “because I didn’t have the talent.”
But what really set the two athletes apart? Did one possess a genetic pre-disposition for speed? Could the other’s dogged work ethic trump his seeming lack of innate ability?
These are some of the questions Epstein, a Sports Illustrated writer, takes on in “The Sports Gene.” From DNA studies of Jamaican sprinters to testing the hand-eye coordination of Los Angeles Angels’ slugger Albert Pujols, Epstein traces how far science has (and hasn’t) come in solving the athletic riddle of nature versus nurture. And in spite of the title, this engaging narrative shows why neither genes nor grit alone will take home the laurel wreath.
