Siddhartha Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University, a cancer physician and researcher, and the author of previous books on topics including genes and cancer. These are similar in structure to The Song of the Cell in that Mukherjee takes one starting point and explores it from as many angles as you can imagine — always as a scientist first, but bringing the science to life with references to the scientists involved or even to literary characters. His books can be called tomes, it will take you a while to get through one. But it is so worth it. Having gone through medical school and working as a GP, there is a sense that Mukherjee is writing about things that we know. Mitochondria and nuclei, mitosis and meiosis, CD4 and T-cells, actin and myosin, monoclonal antibodies — the language is familiar. But there is so much you will have forgotten, or only while reading will you realise you never really understood. The first part is a history of the evolution of the cell (bacterial, plant, animal, and human), as well as a history of how scientists have come to understand cells in the first place. Names of scientists pop up that you have heard about but can now put into context. There is a lot about blood and the different immune cells. And because it is all packaged as a story you will remember it, and this knowledge will come in handy the next time you read a letter from a haematologist or oncologist.