Review by New York Times Review
SUGAR RUN, by Mesha Maren. (Algonquin, $26.95.) An ex-convict returns to her Appalachian roots in this debut novel. The literary lineages here are hard-boiled fiction and film noir - but by exploring place, connection and redemption in the face of the justice system, Maren creates bold takes on those venerable genres. ANNE FRANK'S DIARY: The Graphic Adaptation, adapted by Ari Folman. Illustrated by David Polonsky. (Pantheon, $24.95.) By turning the famous diary of a girl hiding from the Nazis into a graphic novel, Folman and Polonsky bring out its wit and humor in whimsical illustrations capturing Anne's rich imaginative life. REVOLUTION SUNDAY, by Wendy Guerra. Translated by Achy Obejas. (Melville House, paper, $16.99.) This Cuban novel, about a poet facing political and personal questions amid the loosening grip of socialism, plays with expectations; as often as Guerra gives a concrete description of Havana, she gives one that dances and evades. GHOST WALL, by Sarah Moss. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $22.) This compact, riveting novel, about a 17-year-old working-class girl forced by her parents to join a re-enactment of Iron Age Britain, asks us to question our complicity in violence, particularly against women. MY SISTER, THE SERIAL KILLER, by Oyinkan Braithwaite. (Doubleday, $22.95.) Murders litter this debut novel by a young Nigerian writer, but the book is less about crime than about the complexities of sibling bonds, as well as the way two sisters manage to survive in a corrupt city that suffocates women at every turn. THE BREAKTHROUGH: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer, by Charles Graeber. (Twelve, $28.) Training the body's immune system to fight disease now offers the most promising developments in the effort to battle cancer. Graeber recounts the treatment's 19th-century origins and provides a panoramic view of the work being done today to make it effective. TODDLER-HUNTING: And Other Stories, by Taeko Kono. Translated by Lucy North, with an additional translation by Lucy Lower. (New Directions, paper, $16.95.) As nonchalantly as some authors might describe a character's hair, Kono details her characters' taboo desires. First published in the '60s, these stories all retain interest. WE ARE DISPLACED: My Journey and Stories From Refugee Girls Around the World, by Malala Yousafzai. (Little, Brown, $18.99; ages 12 and up.) The world's youngest Nobel laureate gathers stirring stories of displacement from nine other girls. A THOUSAND SISTERS: The Heroic Airwomen of the Soviet Union in World War II, by Elizabeth Wein. (Balzer + Bray, $19.99; ages 13 and up.) The powerful tale of the all-female Soviet air regiments who flew 24,000 missions to help defeat the Nazis. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 31, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Cut, burn, poison. Harsh-sounding traditional treatments (surgery, radiation, chemotherapy) for cancer that identify malignancy as the cruel adversary it is. An estimated half of cancer patients cannot currently be cured. Immunotherapy is poised to be a uniquely useful treatment. It essentially weaponizes and unleashes the body's immune system so that antibodies serve as microscopic guided missiles and re-engineered T cells work as supersoldiers that recognize and attack tumors. Graeber concisely reviews the science of cancer and the natural functioning of the immune system. He introduces researchers and oncologists in the field and provides stories of patients with melanoma, kidney cancer, sarcoma, and leukemia. Two major developments in cancer immunotherapy are checkpoint inhibitors (e.g., FDA-approved ipilimumab) and chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T), an ingenious laboratory modification of T cells extracted from a patient with cancer and then injected back into that patient. Each CAR-T cell is capable of destroying up to 100,000 cancer cells. The risks of tinkering with an intricate immune system are obviously high, even perilous. But the potential reward is a cure. Exciting reading.--Tony Miksanek Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"Hype can be dangerous, just as false hope can be cruel," journalist Graeber (The Good Nurse) writes in this lucid and informed report on how doctors and medical researchers, advancing beyond a "cut, burn, and poison" approach to fighting cancer, discovered how to use the human immune response to attack mutant cells. Graeber recalls the "crushing failure" cancer immunotherapy suffered in the 1970s, and the giddy over-optimism seen in the 1980s before cancer breakthroughs such as interferon drugs went bust and immunotherapy research was left to a "handful of true believers." His narrative moves from the grueling stories of research experiments and drug trials-through which pharmaceutical companies "spread their bets" over a variety of potential drugs-to the even more grueling experiences of cancer patients. Graeber focuses on the scientific developments and the "mind-blowing possibilities," such as cellular therapy, in which living cells are used to fight cancer. Noting there are 940 immunotherapeutic drugs being tested by more than a half million patients, with another 1,064 drugs in the preclinical stage, he predicts the cancer cure lies in the personalized immunotherapy route. Graeber gives readers a basis for both understanding the challenges involved and for cautious optimism that a cure can be found. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Imagine a vaccine that could cure cancer. As this book reports, that possibility may not be far off.Cancer treatment has long relied on "cut, burn, and poison" methods: surgery, which science journalist Graeber (The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder, 2013) notes has been with us for thousands of years, coupled with the more modern radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Immunotherapy leverages the body's natural defense systems, made up of hundreds of millions of cells that are constantly "searching [for] and destroying the invaders that make us sick and the body cells that have become infected, mutated, or defective"all of which describe cancer. Immunotherapy, in short, unlocks the natural-born cancer killer within, which is no easy task, inasmuch as a hallmark of cancer is its ability to lurk within the body undetected until, at least of old, it is too late. As the author chronicles, scientists have yet to completely understand the workings of the T cell "as the serial-killing attacker of foreign cells," but they have figured out what switches that cell on: a system of responses that are "something like how multiple keys are required to unlock a nuclear button or to open a safe deposit box." This helps moderate a constant danger that the immune system responses can sometimes lead to autoimmune diseases, where the cells lock onto the wrong thing; thus the "many redundancies and fail-safe feedback loops built into the immune response." Enough has been learned that previously discarded immunotherapies are being studied to determine whether they would work "with the brakes off," after having been paired with a "checkpoint inhibitor." Graeber reports that immunology researchers are promising more soonmore drugs, more fast-tracking to get therapies into hospitals, more "biomarkers to better describe cancer with molecular specificity." Though sometimes clumsily written, the book offers hope for more effective treatments in the near future.A readable survey of the emerging field of immunotherapy in cancer treatment. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
