I have most of the introductory cancer biology books currently on the market, and this book by King and Robins is among the better ones, though it's far from ideal. To start with the positive, the main strengths of this book are as follows:



1. The book isn't overly long, so you can read it cover to cover in a reasonable amount of time.



2. The writing is fairly clear and concise.



3. The summaries of key points at the beginning of each chapter are helpful for both preview and review.



My main complaint about this book, which applies to other similar books and the cancer research establishment in general, is that there's too much emphasis on details of molecular biology (which have yet to demonstrate meaningful clinical benefit), at the expense of a more balanced and comprehensive approach to cancer biology which pays more attention to topics such as angiogenesis, characteristics of established tumor vasculature, hypoxia, drug penetration into tumors, mechanics of invasion, tumor cell metabolism (particularly aerobic glycolysis), quantitative tumor growth modeling, intratumoral and intertumoral heterogeneity, mechanisms of treatment resistance, tumor evolution, tumor robustness, tumor complexity, tumor stem cells, interactions between tumor cells and the microenvironment, etc. To be clear, the book does touch on most of these topics, but it doesn't spend nearly enough time on them, whereas much of the discussion of molecular biology is excessively detailed, to the point of being harder to read than the typical cancer journal paper (of which I've read hundreds).



Since I don't know of other introductory cancer biology books which are substantially better than this one, I've rated this book 4 stars and I suppose I can recommend it to people looking for such a book. However, I have to reiterate that I'm not really satisfied with this book and will continue to look for something closer to an ideal book on this topic.

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