Natural Obsessions

Striving to Unlock the Deepest Secrets of the Cancer Cell

As dramatic as The Double Helix and as absorbing as The Soul of a New Machine, Natural Obsessions explores the advanced reaches of molecular biology, the nature of the human cell, and the genes that control cancer. It unforgettably portrays some of the best young scientists in the world, the rewards and discouragements of scientific research, and the very process of scientific inquiry.

©1988 Natalie Angier. Introduction © 1999 by Natalie Angier (P)2023 Blackstone Publishing

Behind the curtain of scientific research

The tale of an intensely competitive race to understand how cancer starts—told by a brilliantly observant writer who spent almost two years in key laboratories documenting not just the step by step scientific advances and setbacks but, most compellingly, the personal lives of the scientists themselves as they struggled to maintain momentum in the face of one of nature’s most difficult and deadly mysteries. I learned a ton of biology but also a lot about human nature and what it takes to be a scientist.