The Magic of Normal: Hope, Love, and Beyond

5 Star Review

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Editorial Book Review:

By Mary Woolf

In The Magic of Normal: Hope, Love, and Beyond, Dr. Maky Zanganeh delivers a deeply inspiring and emotionally resonant memoir that transcends the personal and touches the universal. A leader in the biotechnology world and a cancer survivor, she invites readers into an intimate account of healing, perseverance, and the rediscovery of meaning through adversity. With remarkable grace, she transforms pain into purpose, offering not only her story, but also a guiding light for others navigating life’s harshest trials.

Dr. Zanganeh's writing is unwaveringly authentic, articulate, and warm. Her voice is a unique blend of intelligence and intimacy, seamlessly integrating vulnerable reflections on family, faith, and the quiet miracle of everyday life with high-stakes medical innovation. The book's structure is characterized by a natural ease that is never rushed and never indulgent, which is rooted in lived experience and layered with moments of clarity and emotional truth. It is personal without sentimentality and literary without pretense.

A profound celebration of "normal"—the overlooked, hard-won, and ultimately extraordinary moments that make life worth living—is at the core of this memoir. The book delves into the diverse manifestations of love, including the love of work, the love of family, and the love of life. It also exhibits uncommon courage in its confrontation of mortality, illness, and uncertainty. In doing so, Dr. Zanganeh reclaims agency from fear and reminds us that dignity and hope are not luxuries, but daily choices.

The book provides a close-up view of the biotech industry's ability to transform lives and the frontiers of cancer treatment from an intellectual perspective. It serves as an emotional balm, a reminder that we can remain whole even in the presence of disease. The immediacy and depth of her journey through a personal diagnosis during a global pandemic are felt long after the final page.

The Magic of Normal instructs us not only on how to endure, but also on how to live with a greater sense of humility, gratitude, and presence. It is a contemplation of the most important things, as told by an individual who has encountered the most adversities and has chosen to return to the world not shattered, but beautifully reconstructed.

A must-read for anyone seeking clarity through chaos, strength through suffering, and truth in the quiet spaces we too often overlook. Dr. Zanganeh has not only written a memoir—she has composed a love letter to life itself.

About the Author

Maky Zanganeh

Dr. Maky Zanganeh has led many industry transformations ranging from minimally invasive surgical robotics to a patient-friendly small molecule drug for blood cancer patients. She is known by her colleagues as a leader who has a proven track record of bringing unmistakable intensity and clarity to companies who have transformed healthcare for the betterment of humankind. She firmly believes in the concept “take responsibility and the ability will follow.”

Maky is currently the Co-Chief Executive Officer and President, as well as a member of the board at Summit Therapeutics – a company focusing on the development and commercialization of physician and patient-friendly oncology therapies.

Prior to that, Dr Zanganeh, as Chief Operating Officer at Pharmacyclics (a patient-friendly oncology company) , led a struggling biotech company to a multimillion-dollar collaboration and license deal for ibrutinib with Janssen Biotech Inc. in 2011 and, the subsequent sale of the company for twenty one billion dollars in 2015 to AbbVie Inc. The deal with Janssen Biotech received the award of the “Best Biotech Transaction” in 2011. Under her leadership in 2015, Pharmacyclics was also awarded the prestigious Prix Galien for “Best Pharmaceutical Agent.” This award is the biomedical industry’s highest accolade and recognizes outstanding achievements in the development of new therapies.