Make No Small Plans: M. D. Anderson Cancer Center Endeavors to Make Canc...( HOUSTON May 8 -- I had cancer. I ha...),Health

HOUSTON, May 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- "I had cancer. I have cancer. I will always have cancer."

So begins Professor James S. Olson's richly detailed chronicle of the birth and growth of The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center to international eminence. Blending the roles of historian and narrator, Olson recounts an epic tale of vision, courage and frontier spirit that shaped the hospital, influenced the course of modern oncology and offered hope to those who too often had none.

Making Cancer History: Disease and Discovery at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center (Johns Hopkins University Press) breaks new ground in the genre. More than a chronological retelling, it combines Texas-sized disputes, medical mystery and discovery, cultural conflict and social change. Olson, a Pulitzer-nominated historian and author of Bathsheba's Breast: Women, Cancer and History, documents M. D. Anderson's rise to national and global prominence against all odds - scientific and political.

At every step Olson weaves history with personal journeys. Among the most compelling is his own experience with two difficult forms of cancer that required treatment ten times for primary tumors or recurrences, including the amputation of his left forearm. "The reader should know that M. D. Anderson has been a part of my life since 1981 when I... entrusted to them my future. Time and again, the institution redeemed that trust," said Olson.

History's Oldest Medical Puzzle - Victory, Defeat and an Elusive Enemy

Not so long ago, a cancer diagnosis often meant a death sentence. What treatments did exist were largely radical and debilitating. In Making Cancer History, Olson illuminates why cancer's complexities have long bedeviled researchers and physicians, unraveling the biological origin of cancer, its earliest treatments and investigation in anci
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