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Kevin McLaughlin Photo by Vera LaMarche

As 2012 drew TO A Close, it began to look like I might have a shot at the executive editor position at Cancer Today. Responding to the good news, my son, Stephen, gave me a very suitable Christmas gift: a copy of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.

At nearly 600 pages, this doorstop of a book served as my primer for learning about cancer history and current developments. The author, Siddhartha Mukherjee, an oncologist and a researcher, wove a complex narrative of cancer’s “biography,” seeking to “enter the mind of this immortal illness, to understand its personality, to demystify its behavior.”

Mukherjee told the stories of cancer activists, researchers and patients in order to better understand the disease and explain it to others. His painstaking labor, a project he also called “a personal journal of my coming-of-age as an oncologist,” netted his book the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.

This spring, a six-hour film based on Mukherjee’s book will air on PBS stations. Cancer Today writer Marilyn Fenichel tells the story of how Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies came to be made, starting with the enthusiasm of two prominent women in the media who had cancer: Sharon Percy Rockefeller, the chief executive officer of WETA, the PBS station in the Washington, D.C., area, and Laura Ziskin, a movie producer and a co-founder of Stand Up To Cancer, which provides funding for promising cancer research. Rockefeller was treated successfully for stage IIIB colorectal cancer; Ziskin died in 2011 of metastatic breast cancer.

The project took off when the pair recruited Ken Burns, who had found fame with his 1990 documentary The Civil War. Burns agreed to serve as executive producer, co-writer and senior creative consultant, but he asked that another filmmaker produce and direct the documentary. Barak Goodman, a filmmaker whose 2000 documentary Scottsboro: An American Tragedy was nominated for an Oscar, agreed to take on the project.

The fruit of their labor will air on many PBS stations from March 30 to April 1. I encourage you to tune in. Wherever you are in your cancer journey as a patient, survivor or caregiver, you’ll be moved and learn a good deal from watching Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies. And let me recommend that you also read the inspiration for the documentary, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s wonderful book.

The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), publisher of Cancer Today, is a supporter of Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies. For more than a century, the AACR’s mission has been to prevent and cure cancer through research, education, communication and collaboration. Many AACR members were among the pioneers in cancer research, and today more than 35,000 AACR members are on the front lines of the quest for cancer prevention and cures. If you want to support cancer research, please visit the AACR Foundation website to see how you can help.