The song of the cell : an exploration of medicine and the new human

Title:

Author:

Summary:

Mukherjee begins this magnificent story in the late 1600s, when a distinguished English polymath, Robert Hooke, and an eccentric Dutch cloth-merchant, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek looked down their handmade microscopes. What they saw introduced a radical concept that swept through biology and medicine, touching virtually every aspect of the two sciences, and altering both forever. It was 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 christened 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 reconceived 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 you 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. -- Amazon.

General Note:

Title from web page.

Compact discs.

Edition:

Unabridged.

Physical Description:

13 audio discs (approximately 900 min.) : CD audio, digital ; 4 3/4 in.

Genre:

Audiobooks.

Subject Term:

Cytology.

Cytology -- Research.

Microbiology.

Author(s):

Boutsikaris, Dennis,

Publisher:

Simon & Schuster,

Publication Date:

2022

ISBN:

9781797147086

Publication Information:

[New York] : Simon & Schuster, [2022]

Call Number:

CDB 571.6 MUKHERJEE

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003646166	New Adult Nonfiction Books on CDs	571.6 MUKHERJEE	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

Winner of the 2023 PROSE Award for Excellence in Biological and Life Sciences!

Named a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by The Economist , Oprah Daily, BookPage, Book Riot, the New York Public Library, and more!

In The Song of the Cell , the extraordinary author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies and the #1 New York Times bestseller The Gene "blends cutting-edge research, impeccable scholarship, intrepid reporting, and gorgeous prose into an encyclopedic study that reads like a literary page-turner" ( Oprah Daily ).

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 reconceived as the results of cells, or systems of cells, functioning abnormally. And all could be perceived as loci of cellular therapies.

Filled with writing so vivid, lucid, and suspenseful that complex science becomes thrilling, The Song of the Cell tells the story of how scientists discovered cells, began to understand them, and are now using that knowledge to create new humans. Told in six parts, and 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 on what it means to be human.

"In an account both lyrical and capacious, Mukherjee takes us through an evolution of human understanding: from the seventeenth-century discovery that humans are made up of cells to our cutting-edge technologies for manipulating and deploying cells for therapeutic purposes" ( The New Yorker).

Author Notes

Siddhartha Mukherjee is the author of The Gene: An Intimate History, a #1 New York Times bestseller; The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer , winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction; and The Laws of Medicine . He is the editor of Best Science Writing 2013 . Mukherjee is an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University and a cancer physician and researcher. A Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford, and Harvard Medical School. In 2023, he was elected as a new member of the National Academy of Medicine. He has published articles in many journals, including Nature , The New England Journal of Medicine , Cell , The New York Times Magazine , and The New Yorker . He lives in New York with his wife and daughters. Visit his website at: SiddharthaMukherjee.com.

Dennis Boutsikaris won an OBIE Award for his performance in Sight Unseen and played Mozart in Amadeus on Broadway. Among his films are *batteries not included , The Dream Team , and Boys On the Side . His many television credits include And Then There Was One , Chasing the Dragon , and 100 Center Street .

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

A better understanding of the cell holds immense power for medicine according to this eye-opening account from Pulitzer winner Mukherjee (The Emperor of All Maladies). He begins with the ground-breaking realization from two 19th-century scientists that every bit of plant and animal tissue in the world is made up of microscopic cells. Since then, Mukherjee writes, there has been "a revolution in the making, and a history (and future) that had been unwritten: of cells, of our capacity to manipulate cells." An extraordinarily gifted storyteller, Mukherjee offers an expansive chronology of discovery in cell therapies (such as IVF) and setbacks, such as the use of thalidomide for pregnancies in the 1960s. He also includes stories of what he calls "new humans"--Mukherjee clarifies that the term isn't a sci-fi-inspired "vision of the future," but rather everyday folks whose health has been restored by advances in cellular manipulation and engineering, such as a patient who recovered from leukemia with cell therapy. The author's ideas about the near future of medicine (one in which medicine will "perhaps even create synthetic versions of cells, and parts of humans") are both convincing and inspiring, and woven throughout his narrative are accessible explanations of cell biology and immunology. This is another winner from Mukherjee. (Oct.)

Library Journal Review

Mukherjee gives us the story of those minuscule, self-regulating packages called cells, from their groundbreaking discovery by English scientist/architect Robert Hooke and Dutch cloth merchant Antonie van Leeuwenhoek to revolutionary new ways cells are being manipulated today to improve human health. Following the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies and the No. 1 New York Times best-selling The Gene.