What books does Siddhartha Mukherjee recommend?
Attuned to how great writers control tone and turn small stories into large ones, Siddhartha Mukherjee, the Pulitzer-winning oncologist and author of The Emperor of All Maladies, offers book recommendations shaped by a physician-scientist's ear. These 14 titles are gathered from Guardian and Goodreads interviews and official endorsements, and they span history, biography and memoir, and science and technology, with genetics recurring as a throughline. His hero and top pick is Primo Levi, whose Survival in Auschwitz he calls "perhaps the best book I have read," praising a tone "at once clinical, sceptical and humane" that he treats as a writing standard. Elsewhere he recommends James Watson's The Double Helix as "a racy, funny, scandalous read" and Matt Ridley's Genome for prose that "sparkles" without oversimplifying the science. Mukherjee has also authored three acclaimed books of his own on cancer, the gene, and the cell.
Last updated February 2026 · Every recommendation cited to its original source.
Survival in Auschwitz
The Nazi Assault on Humanity
byPrimo Levi
1995192 Pages“Perhaps the best book I have read... His tone in Survival in Auschwitz is so perfectly controlled, at once clinical, sceptical and humane, that it remains the standard that all fiction and non-fiction writers might aspire to.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee
Source: The Guardian interview, 'My hero: Primo Levi'
byPrimo Levi
1975233 Pages“While writing my own book on the history of cancer, I returned to him for his control of tone, his capacity to talk about very big stories through very small stories.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee
Source: The Guardian interview, 'My hero: Primo Levi'
The Double Helix
A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA
byJames D. Watson
1968226 Pages“Watson's searingly honest chronicle of the race to solve DNA's structure... it humanized science and scientists. It is a racy, funny, scandalous read—a glimpse into the inner anatomy of science.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee
Source: Goodreads Interview on Genetics Books
byMatt Ridley
2006344 Pages“Ridley's extraordinary book uses the 23 human chromosomes (23 chapters) to explore subjects as diverse as disease, fate, language, and racial history. The writing sparkles, and the science is never oversimplified.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee
Source: Goodreads Interview on Genetics Books
The Eighth Day of Creation
Makers of the Revolution in Biology
byHorace Freeland Judson
1996720 Pages“Judson's masterwork describes the birth of the 'new biology' of gene manipulation and molecular biology... produced one of the rarest glimpses of a new and powerful science coming to life.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee
Source: Goodreads Interview on Genetics Books
Read by Jordan Peterson, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Ben Shapiro and 4 others
byAldous Huxley
2006288 Pages“It's not exactly a book about genetics but about a world in which the fate of an individual is determined from the start... It would all sound absurd, until one realizes how it isn't and how we are perilously orbiting such brave new worlds today.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee
Source: Goodreads Interview on Genetics Books
Read by Charlie Munger, Eric Weinstein, Siddhartha Mukherjee and 3 others
The Selfish Gene
40th Anniversary Edition
byRichard Dawkins
2016544 Pages“Dawkins used this book to introduce a powerful idea that still persists: that genes select themselves as autonomous units that compete for their selfish survival.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee
Source: Goodreads Interview on Genetics Books
Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
byKatherine Boo
2012256 Pages“I finished, after a long delay, Katherine Boo's book... about life in a Mumbai slum. I loved it.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee
Source: The Guardian interview, 'I don't like writing as if I don't exist'
bySalman Rushdie
2006560 Pages“Midnight's Children was an immense book for me, as it was for tens of thousands of readers in India.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee
Source: The Guardian interview, 'I don't like writing as if I don't exist'
Maximum City
Bombay Lost and Found
bySuketu Mehta
2005584 Pages“Suketu Mehta's book... was very influential, both in terms of style and the way he puts together memoir and history.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee
Source: The Guardian interview, 'I don't like writing as if I don't exist'
Nineteen Eighty-Four
A Novel
byGeorge Orwell
2003328 Pages“I read Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1984... very influential.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee
Source: The Guardian interview, 'I don't like writing as if I don't exist'
Intimations
Six Essays
byZadie Smith
2020112 Pages“Zadie Smith has a very slim essay collection that's great, called Intimations.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee
Source: The Guardian interview, 'I don't like writing as if I don't exist'
The Lives of Artists
Collected Profiles
byCalvin Tomkins
20191640 Pages“The Lives of Artists by Calvin Tomkins is a nice series of essays.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee
Source: The Guardian interview, 'I don't like writing as if I don't exist'
Loonshots
How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries
bySafi Bahcall
2019368 Pages“A wonderful book that explores the beauty, quirkiness and complexity of ideas... If you care about ideas—especially new and out-of-the-box ones—you need to read this book.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee
Source: Book Blurb / Official Endorsement
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Frequently asked questions
What books does Siddhartha Mukherjee recommend?
His 14 recommendations include Survival in Auschwitz and The Periodic Table by Primo Levi, The Double Helix by James Watson, Genome by Matt Ridley, and The Eighth Day of Creation by Horace Freeland Judson.
What is Siddhartha Mukherjee's favorite book?
Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, which he calls "perhaps the best book I have read." He admires Levi's controlled tone, "at once clinical, sceptical and humane," and returned to Levi's work while writing his own history of cancer.
Where do Siddhartha Mukherjee's book recommendations come from?
They come from Guardian interviews, including his "My hero: Primo Levi" piece, a Goodreads interview on genetics books, and official book endorsements he has written, such as his blurb for Safi Bahcall's Loonshots.
Has Siddhartha Mukherjee written any books?
Yes, three: The Emperor of All Maladies (2010), which won the Pulitzer Prize, The Gene: An Intimate History (2016), and The Song of the Cell (2022).
What genetics books does Siddhartha Mukherjee recommend?
He recommends James Watson's The Double Helix, calling it "a racy, funny, scandalous read," Matt Ridley's Genome for prose that "sparkles," Horace Freeland Judson's The Eighth Day of Creation, and Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene.
All 14 Books Siddhartha Mukherjee Has Recommended
- Survival in Auschwitz · Primo Levi
- The Periodic Table · Primo Levi
- The Double Helix · James D. Watson
- Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters · Matt Ridley
- The Eighth Day of Creation · Horace Freeland Judson
- Brave New World · Aldous Huxley
- The Selfish Gene · Richard Dawkins
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers · Katherine Boo
- Midnight's Children · Salman Rushdie
- Maximum City · Suketu Mehta
- Nineteen Eighty-Four · George Orwell
- Intimations · Zadie Smith
- The Lives of Artists · Calvin Tomkins
- Loonshots · Safi Bahcall