The Sage Encyclopedia of Cancer and Society second edition, reviewed here in its e-book version, contains over 600 entries on a wide range of topics related to cancer, such as types of cancer, known and potential carcinogens and causes of cancer, country profiles, as well as entries devoted to organizations, companies, hospitals and individuals associated with cancer awareness and treatment. The country profiles are particularly illuminating in showing the different rates and incidences of cancer around the world and offering possible explanations for these discrepancies. Some country entries even include a historical perspective, shedding further light on advances in research and treatment.
Each entry is followed by a list of related topics, hyperlinked for quick access, as well as a curated list of further readings. These lists, typically comprising three to ten readings, include relevant books, journal articles, news reports and websites. Links are provided for the online readings, though a number of these result in error messages. Some of the links are broken, which is to be expected because of the impermanence of web sources, but others seem to have typographical errors that prevent the links from working correctly. Still others suffer from a mismatch between what is described in the list of further readings and where the link actually points, which can sometimes be two entirely different resources.
This second edition, edited by Graham A. Colditz, Niess-Gain Professor of Surgery and associate director of Prevention and Control at the Siteman Cancer Center at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, updates the first edition published in 2007. The new edition updates about half of the articles from the first and adds over 30 new entries. The cancer chronology, which traces developments in the field from ancient times, has also been updated. The entries can be understood by readers without a medical background and situate cancer within a larger societal and cultural context. A helpful glossary is provided to explain unfamiliar terms, but many of the individual entries already define any terms that might be confusing to the general reader. The encyclopedia also contains a useful Reader’s Guide that conveniently groups entries by topic: Alternative Treatments and Therapies; Associations by Cancer Type; Associations: Other; Business of Cancer; Cancer Around the World; Cancer in Society; Known or Suspected Carcinogens; Major Cancer Associations; Major Hospitals and Treatment Centers; Prevention; Treatments and Therapies; and Types of Cancer. The encyclopedia’s back matter contains a resource guide of books, journals and websites, as well as an appendix related to the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program.
The electronic version of the encyclopedia offers several ways to navigate the text. Readers can browse the list of alphabetical entries, use the Reader’s Guide to locate entries by topic or search within the text to find relevant entries. The entries themselves load quickly, including those with images and diagrams. There were a number of typographical issues in the entries, which included misspellings, missing words and spacing issues.
The electronic text offers several advantages over the print version, such as hyperlinked entries and searching abilities. Although there were issues with broken links and typographical errors throughout the text, the encyclopedia still offers a wealth of useful information about cancer from a public health perspective for general readers. This text would be most useful for academic libraries with health sciences programmes, as well as hospital libraries or large public libraries with a consumer health focus.
