Anticancer: A New Way of Life

A radical synthesis of science and personal experience that advocates a sea change in the way we understand and confront cancer

When David Servan- Schreiber, a dedicated scientist and doctor, was diagnosed with brain cancer, it changed his life. Confronting what medicine knows about the illness, the little known workings of the body’s natural cancer-fighting capacities, and his own will to live, Servan-Schreiber found himself on a fifteen-year journey from disease and relapse into scientific exploration, and finally to health. Combining memoir with a clear explanation of what makes cancer cells thrive and what inhibits them, and describing both conventional and alternative ways to slow and prevent cancer, Anticancer is revolutionary in its clarity. It is a moving story of a doctor’s inner and outer search for healing; radical in its discussion of the environment, lifestyle, and trauma; and inspiring and cautionary in its certainty that cancer cells lie dormant in all of us—and we all must care for the “terrain” in which they exist.

Anticancer takes us on a serious journey and, ultimately, an empowering one. In the tradition of Michael Pollan, John Kabat- Zinn, Barbara Kingsolver, and Andrew Weil, Anticancer genuinely guides us to “a new way of life.”