With the fascinating scholarship of The Emperor of All Maladies and the deeply personal experience of When Breath Becomes Air, a world-class oncologist examines the current state of cancer and its devastating impact on the individuals it affects -- including herself.

Prologue : cancer and its discontents --
Introduction : from last to first --
Omar : the nobleness of life is to do thus --
Per : sand piles and cancer --
Lady N : a loaded gun --
Kitty C : what wound did ever heal but by degrees? --
JC : one touch of nature makes the whole world kin --
Andrew : was honesty a choice? --
Harvey : death stared him in the face, and he stared right back --
Aftermath : give sorrow words --
Epilogue : the dawn has already arrived.

A world-class oncologist's devastating and deeply personal examination of cancer We have lost the war on cancer. We spend $150 billion each year treating it, yet-a few innovations notwithstanding-a patient with cancer is as likely to die of it as one was fifty years ago. Most new drugs add mere months to one's life at agonizing physical and financial cost. In The First Cell, Azra Raza offers a searing account of how both medicine and our society (mis)treats cancer, how we can do better, and why we must. A lyrical journey from hope to despair and back again, The First Cell explores cancer from every angle: medical, scientific, cultural, and personal. Indeed, Raza describes how she bore the terrible burden of being her own husband's oncologist as he succumbed to leukemia. Like When Breath Becomes Air, The First Cell is no ordinary book of medicine, but a book of wisdom and grace by an author who has devoted her life to making the unbearable easier to bear.