Cancer is a terrible disease. It is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, and it is the disease that we still don’t have a very good handle on. There is hardly any family that has not been touched by cancer. The tragedy of a death or impaired life due to cancer is usually so dreadful that we can hardly bring ourselves to understand it better, especially if our understanding seems to have almost no effect on our lives. However, it is important to understand cancer for many reasons, not least of which is the impact that this understanding can have on public and health-care policies. This very short introduction aims to give the reader a quick, yet fairly comprehensive, view of cancer.

Strictly speaking, cancer is not one, but many different diseases. Even though the basic underlying cellular mechanism behind all cancers is essentially the same, the ways in which various cancers manifest themselves varies greatly. Furthermore, cancer affects people at different stages of their lives differently. These are just some of the complexities that one encounters when taking a closer look at cancer, and this book does a great job of exploring those issues. The book deals with the size of the cancer problem, the development of cancer, the treatment of cancer, cancer research, the economics of cancer care, and the alternative and complementarity approaches to cancer care. All of these topics are dealt with very objectively and dispassionately, and yet this book is not a dry read. It is written with a lot of care and insight into the vastness of the problem that is cancer.

I have to admit, this was a very hard book for me to read. I could only read about a dozen or so pages at a time since the topic of cancer has such a powerful and morbid impact on me. Nonetheless, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the basic facts about cancer.