battling this is the use i wanted to feel it was somewhat more connected to the problem. i don t think that was the only reason, not that they chose to do work about cancer, but i saw an opportunity in my thinking about cancer as a problem mainly we didn t understand how a normal cell became a cancer cell and there were a couple new tools having to do with how we measure dna and rna, some with viruses that cause cancer in animals that led me to believe this huge medical problem that affected my family would be amenable to some solutions by taking advantage of these opportunities to do interesting science. this is based on lectures you gave in 2004 at the new york public library. tell us about those and how did they morph into the book? that s a fun question. a famous biographer friend of mine asked me to give those lectures and i didn t read the fine printing. the norton elections, then i saw norton sponsoring the letter signed a contract with me and i had to turn them in