The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World Hardcover | Pages: 299 pages

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Original Title:	The Ghost Map
ISBN:	1594489254 (ISBN13: 9781594489259)
Edition Language:	English

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From Steven Johnson, the dynamic thinker routinely compared to James Gleick, Dava Sobel, and Malcolm Gladwell, The Ghost Map is a riveting page-turner about a real-life historical hero, Dr. John Snow. It's the summer of 1854, and London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure—garbage removal, clean water, sewers—necessary to support its rapidly expanding population, the city has become the perfect breeding ground for a terrifying disease no one knows how to cure. As the cholera outbreak takes hold, a physician and a local curate are spurred to action—and ultimately solve the most pressing medical riddle of their time. In a triumph of multidisciplinary thinking, Johnson illuminates the intertwined histories and inter-connectedness of the spread of disease, contagion theory, the rise of cities, and the nature of scientific inquiry, offering both a riveting history and a powerful explanation of how it has shaped the world we live in.

Itemize Of Books The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

Title	:	The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
Author	:	Steven Johnson
Book Format	:	Hardcover
Book Edition	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 299 pages
Published	:	November 1st 2006 by Riverhead Books (first published October 19th 2006)
Categories	:	History. Nonfiction. Science. Health. Medicine. Medical. Historical. Audiobook

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Ratings: 3.9 From 37197 Users | 3565 Reviews

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In the The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, Johnson has written a history with a number of check marks.Accessibility? CheckComplete Story? Check.Argument Well Presented? Check.Present New Insight? Check.Present Significance to Us/Contemporaries. Big Check.Primary Sources? Check. Johnson used committee reports generated in 1850s, various writings of Dr John Snow who realized the water coming from the Broad Street

This is an account of the 1854 cholera epidemic in London and of the work of John Snow who through his scientific investigations managed to establish that cholera was waterborne and that the source of this outbreak was the Broad Street pump. This was going against the scientific opinion of the time a miasmic theory which argued that air, small and conditions were responsible. The book covers a variety of areas: history, biography, detective work, epidemiology and scientific investigation.

Cholera is a nasty little bug. Once ingested, it forms colonies on the intestinal wall, begins to reproduce with ferocious speed, and proceeds to trick the cells into excreting water rather than absorb it. It doesn't really matter of the host dies soon, because millions of new little cholera bacteria rush out of the host with the excreta waiting for the next person to ingest some excrement. That is the key. The only was to get cholera is by ingesting the excrement of another person so infected.

Cholera had been endemic in England for two decades when it hit the Golden Square neighbourhood of Soho, quite literally, like a bomb. The most virulent single outbreak of the disease in the country's history also provided the opportunity to understand the disease and apply preventative measures... if only medical science weren't so convinced that disease were a combination of class prejudice and smell.This is the story of one man's struggle to push his theory forward, aided by a degree of local

This review is so EXACTLY my take on this book I'm just going to link to it. The spine of the book, and the best part of it, is the long detailed explanation of what Snow and Whitehead did to trace (not stop!) the cholera epidemic, ending with that famous pump handle. I loved them -- they're seriously like little scientist versions of Holmes and Watson. The history-of-science parts discussing the evolutionary shift in ideas about contagion are also quite good. But the book falls down badly in

This starts out so well, with descriptions of the guys who used to scavenge in the sewers of London. It then goes into the nitty gritty of where all those Londoners used to put their shit (basically a lot of them just piled it up in their cellars). I love this kind of thing -- looking at the forgotten underside of a period or place in history.Unfortunately, Johnson runs out of steam pretty fast. He repeats the same points over and over again about how crazy people were for believing that smells

I gave this book three stars purely for the degree of useful information accumulated in this work about the transmission of cholera in the nineteenth century. Sadly, that's the limit of which my review is positive. For starts, Johnson isn't a great storyteller. The book is incredibly sterile and frequently unfocused. Johnson's narrative swerved manically between topics which he touched upon incredibly lightly, so lightly in fact that it was often confusing as to the relevancy of it. He was also