The Language of Cells: Life as Seen Under the Microscope

With this beautiful book, Spencer Nadler takes us into the remarkable world of cells–and into the lives of people whose behavior is affected by the cells seen under his microscope. After twenty-five years as a surgical pathologist, Nadler began to miss interacting with the people whose cells he studied. And so, he came out from behind his microscope and as a writer began to focus on people as well as on their cells, examining in this unusual book how a person’s life and spirit–and cells–coexist.

In the diminutive landscape of the microscope, a young patient’s sickle cells look like harmless apples and bananas, but the impact they have on him and his mother is acute. Under Nadler’microscope, normal breast cells look like pink hydrangeas to the remarkably spirited Hanna and her breast cancer cells like distorted hula-hoops. Among the other people we meet are an orchestra conductor who must choose between the rhythms of his music and those of his heart; an obese woman who must learn to get along with her fat cells as she copes with bariatric surgery; two people with early Alzheimer’s disease who fall in love and decide to live together despite the microscopic changes in their brains. In The Language of Cells, Spencer Nadler illuminates in lyrical prose “the quiet heroics of everyday people” as cells and the spirit contribute to the beauty of the human continuum.

Spencer Nadler, M.D., has practiced surgical pathology for more than twenty-five years in Southern California. His essays have appeared in Harper's, The Massachusetts Review, Cross Currents, The Missouri Review, The American Scholar, and Reader's Digest. The Language of Cells is his first book.