Ravenous

Otto Warburg, the Nazis, and the Search for the Cancer-Diet Connection

By: Sam Apple

Narrated by: Mark Bramhall

Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

The extraordinary story of the Nazi-era scientific genius who discovered how cancer cells eat - and what it means for how we should.

The Nobel laureate Otto Warburg - a cousin of the famous finance Warburgs - was widely regarded in his day as one of the most important biochemists of the 20th century, a man whose research was integral to humanity’s understanding of cancer. He was also among the most despised figures in Nazi Germany. As a Jewish homosexual living openly with his male partner, Warburg represented all that the Third Reich abhorred. Yet Hitler and his top advisors dreaded cancer, and protected Warburg in the hope that he could cure it.

In Ravenous, Sam Apple reclaims Otto Warburg as a forgotten, morally compromised genius who pursued cancer single-mindedly even as Europe disintegrated around him. While the vast majority of Jewish scientists fled Germany in the anxious years leading up to World War II, Warburg remained in Berlin, working under the watchful eye of the dictatorship. With the Nazis goose-stepping their way across Europe, systematically rounding up and murdering millions of Jews, Warburg awoke each morning in an elegant, antiques-filled home and rode horses with his partner, Jacob Heiss, before delving into his research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Society.

Hitler and other Nazi leaders, Apple shows, were deeply troubled by skyrocketing cancer rates across the Western world, viewing cancer as an existential threat akin to Judaism or homosexuality. Ironically, they viewed Warburg as Germany’s best chance of survival. Setting Warburg’s work against an absorbing history of cancer science, Apple follows him as he arrives at his central belief that cancer is a problem of metabolism. Though Warburg’s metabolic approach to cancer was considered groundbreaking, his work was soon eclipsed in the early postwar era, after the discovery of the structure of DNA set off a search for the genetic origins of cancer.

Remarkably, Warburg’s theory has undergone a resurgence in our own time, as scientists have begun to investigate the dangers of sugar and the link between obesity and cancer, finding that the way we eat can influence how cancer cells take up nutrients and grow. Rooting his revelations in extensive archival research as well as dozens of interviews with today’s leading cancer authorities, Apple demonstrates how Warburg’s midcentury work may well hold the secret to why cancer became so common in the modern world and how we can reverse the trend. A tale of scientific discovery, personal peril, and the race to end a disastrous disease, Ravenous would be the stuff of the most inventive fiction were it not, in fact, true.

©2021 Sam Apple (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Eye-opening...filled with...outrageous and entertaining stories.... I walked away from Ravenous thinking of Otto Warburg as a sort of Sigmund Freud of cancer research." (Sam Kean, Wall Street Journal)

"[Apple] weaves together this complex narrative in a way that makes arcane science accessible and fascinating. The book is also thought-provoking for anyone interested in avoiding cancer - and who isn’t?" (Marie McCullough, Philadelphia Inquirer)

"The research that Warburg is best known for today, and the work that forms the backbone of Ravenous, is his discovery that cancer cells behave differently from healthy cells in two very specific ways: They consume massive amounts of glucose — Apple compares them to ravenous shipwrecked sailors — and they eschew aerobic respiration in favor of fermentation.... Apple covers everything from Hitler’s obsessive preoccupation with cancer to how the German Empire’s transformation into an industrial powerhouse led to a Romanticism-fueled movement that emphasized both environmental and racial purity. The fact that Apple can make these stories...feel so immediate is a testament to his canny knack for choosing apposite details." (New York Times Book Review)

"A long-overdue biography of German biologist Otto Warburg (1883-1970), who won the Nobel Prize for his work on cell respiration and metabolism, especially as related to cancer.... A welcome addition to the library on the disease and one of its most successful enemies." (Kirkus Reviews)

Excellent book

This book is making a heavy topic an easy listen. Not only does it summarize tons of relevant research both historic and modern, but it links together research and researchers across time and space in a most satisfying way.

I highly recommend this book.

An enlightening biography

I might even go back to the last couple chapters to see if missed anything, truly entertaining.

Great Story

Anyone interested in the history of cancer research should really enjoy this. I found it fascinating.

Very rich content

Enjoyed listening to this audiobook. Very well performed. Many times had to go back and re-listen over and over to understand a bit the scientific content.

Outstanding!

Outstanding! Entertaining as it is informing. Absolutely superb story telling and extremely illuminating. Well done!

Interesting read on many levels

Well written and with so much going on for one book. There’s the gay Jewish angle - of a famous scientist living and working in Nazi Germany. There’s Hitler’s fear of cancer and, in the end, his ironic addiction to exactly the wrong foods. There is the life of a scientist and their works - the way some important findings can be ignored, forgotten, and rediscovered. I was so engrossed that I finished the book in two days.

Nothing but highest praise!

"I require 20k."
The biography of Warburg, history of nazi-ism and cancer research in one excellently meshed and expertly narrated package. I learned a lot and was hooked the entire time.
Perhaps the most ironic fact about the nazi madness is that Haber's, a full jew's, nitrogen research was in fact the achievement that saved Germany, and all the world, from starvation, not Hitler's fantasies of conquering Ukraine for its fertile land. Hitler got everything exactly backwards. Now we need the same for socialism.

Excellent.

Simply excellent performance, story, and information. Now we only need look to sugar & metabolism damage as one side of the cancer coin, the other being immune deficiency/failure.

Loved this Book!

This is one of my favorite books of all time. Cancer is a huge focus for me and Otto Warburg is fundamental in understanding it. This brings together an amazing story that parallels Hitler through WWII

Highly recommended, a must read.

The book gives a unique insight into the life and work of scientist Otto Warbug, his genius, his struggles during the Nazi regime as a “Mischling”, being of Jewish and Protestant descent. 


This real life story includes many captivating dialogues that make readers feel like they are immersed in the actual events of the time. These include not just Otto Warburg, but co-workers and other individuals. Also Hitler and other adversaries of the era. The legacy of Otto Warburg and his cancer research was only fairly recently rediscovered, finally proving Warburg’s hypothesis, now dubbed The Warburg Effect. Warburg’s ideas are now the foundation to further explore cancer treatment.

My English is probably not good enough to give this book the credit it deserves. So I will conclude that I truly enjoyed the book, not only for the content, but the writing style as well.