Siddhartha Mukherjee’s previous book, The Emperor Of All Maladies: A Biography Of Cancer (2010), garnered him a Pulitzer Prize. It’s easy to see why. His writing is extraordinarily good, with a literary and lyrical bent not usually found in works of nonfiction.
This book’s introduction alone is worth reading for its touching poignancy, relating a passage of his family history linked to mental illness and India’s partition in 1947, and explaining the “intimate” context of the book’s title. Due to various genetic predispositions Mukherjee has what in common parlance might be referred to as “skin in the game”.