Customer Reviews

To Dance With the Devil: The New War on Breast Cancer

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This is a well-known and highly praised journalistic account of breast cancer issues, crafted by following Dr. Susan Love, certain of her colleagues and certain of her patients through Love's first years directing the innovative Revlon/ UCLA clinic. The lives of real patients; the politics of breast cancer activism, funding and research; the charismatic, unflappable Susan Love in action in the clinic and on the lectern - all these add up to a fascinating read. But would I give this book to a friend who had breast cancer? Nooo, I don't think so. Too grim! The cited statistics on recurrence and the effectiveness of treatment are the most depressing I've encountered anywhere. When you compare Stabiner's statistical portrait - which comes largely from Love - to that found in Dr. Susan Loves Breast Book, you realize, reluctantly, that it's the same. But The Breast Book discretely softens the blow at every turn. And well it might. Love wanted you to read The Breast Book, extract some feelings of reassurance, and get on with treatment. Reading To Dance with the Devil, you might go home and put a bullet through your head.

Will appeal to: health care professionals, activists and miscellaneous hard reality addicts. Not new patients.

The author has made this most terrifying subject readable in the same way "And the Band Played On" took us into the world of AIDS.