Nonfiction Book Club

Join fellow readers at the Library for an engaging discussion of The Song of the Cell on Thursday April 13th at 1:30 p.m.

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. 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. 

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 masterpiece on what it means to be human.

Copies of the book are available on Libby and may also be reserved for pickup at the library.