The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World |  | Author: Steven Johnson
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Category: Book
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Rating:  142 reviews
Sales Rank: 4816
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1 Reprint
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 1594482691
Dewey Decimal Number: 941
EAN: 9781594482694
ASIN: 1594482691
Publication Date: October 2, 2007
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Product Description
A National Bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book, and an Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Year 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 of the spread of disease, 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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 142
 Brilliant, I Agree July 16, 2010
Marianne
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It is very, very difficult to write a book like this without making it seem "staged" -- that is, without making it seem as if finding the solution to cholera (in hindsight) was inevitable.
What I love so much about Johnson's book was that he showed the reader it was NOT inevitable: in fact, correctly pin-pointing the cause of cholera, and then getting the information to the public so that the disease could be fought, was actually dependent on a series of very intricate coincidences, and of minds working completely in the dark, unaware that others were working on the same problem. Each individual who in the end became instrumental to the cure was operating on blind faith -- there was no one to say who was right, who was wrong.
Really, I loved that he showed that Snow (who correctly pin-pointed the cause of cholera) had built up volumes of knowledge from personal research, conducted on his "off time" from a very very busy medical practice. All of this research was entirely un-compensated (at least monetarily). Where would we be without this stubborn and tireless visionary? I shudder to think.
By the way, the "Night Soil" chapter (despite many shockingly gross details), and a passage describing how noted writer Fanny Burns endured a mastectomy in 1811 with only a drink of cordial to mask her pain -- were truly powerful.
 Up and Down - Ok if you skip the epilogue July 6, 2010
E in Seattle (Seattle, WA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This wasn't the fastest read ever (and I'm an epidemiologist who is interested in these kinds of topics). I usually read books very quickly and it was tough to slog through this one, even with skipping the end (and I HATE not finishing books).
I did enjoy the parts of the book that pertained to the actual cholera outbreak in London and I was able to appreciate the extensive background information on Victorian London since it put the outbreak into context. However, I very much disliked the opining about cities that author was so fond of. Besides being boring and WAY WAY too long (you know you are in trouble when the epilogue/author's opinion is about as long as the rest of the book), the connection to the book's topic was tenuous at best. I finally had to stop reading it - after skimming through the end, I could see that meat of the book was over.
I can live with trying to make the book's topic relevant to current issues, but his opinions were quite a stretch in that regard.
PS You can keep the mega cities - I did not appreciate the attitude that the New York Cities of the world are superior. That really rubbed me the wrong way.
The author should have stopped at page 200... June 30, 2010
John P. Jones III (Albuquerque, NM, USA)
It seems like I am not alone in these sentiments, at least among the critical reviewers of this book. Much of the Conclusion, and certainly all the Epilogue is such a non-sequester in style, content, but primarily in the quality of thought from what preceded it. The last 50 pages seem like a rambling "cut and paste" add-on.
Johnson is a polymath in his own right, and has mastered the diverse aspects of the outbreak of cholera in the Soho section of London, in 1954, and has written a compelling story. It is the London of the time of Charles Dickens, whom Johnson has read and routinely quotes. His descriptions of the significant part of the population that dealt in "recycling" and human wastes (and these people would have formed one of the larger cities in England at the time) were most memorable; Dickeneque in their own right. He provides an excellent clinical description of the action of cholera on the human body. The "drama" of the story centers around the action of two very different men, the scientist Dr. John Snow, and the social worker pastor Henry Whitehead, who combined their different outlooks and skills, to prove that the vector that carried cholera was water; which was totally contradictory to the received ideas of the time. Establishment thought considered it to be the "miasma," the fetid air, the bad smells that transmitted the disease. Johnson gives an impressive biological explanation why human reactions to smells would cloud their judgment; much contradictory evidence, such as the fact that the laborers who worked in the fetid atmosphere of the sewers all day were not particularly susceptible to the disease, was simply ignored. Johnson laces his account with some droll humor, for example, praising the advantage of cities so that it gave consumers an opportunity to concern themselves with "new technologies.... and celebrity gossip"(!) Considerable emphasis is given to the impact of "the Ghost Map," which is a graphical representation of where the deaths occurred, and how this helped "sell" the theory that the water from the one well, at 40 Broad Street, which had been contaminated with cholera from the diapers of Victim #1, or as they say in epidemiology, the "index case," was the source of the disease. And yes, despite some reviewer comments, the Ghost Map is in the book, in several places, even with a "ghost" shading.
But even with the first 200 pages I had some problems. The gas/liquid/solid energy metaphor of the three states of water compared to the three developmental states of human society: hunter-gather/farmer/city dweller is completely muddled, and the energy levels are actually the reverse of what is indicated (p 94). The Ghost Map was in the book, but it certainly would have been useful to have a Voronoi diagram also. And when he cites Marcel Proust and his Madeleine-inspired reveries (p 128) he missed a marvelous opportunity to compare Dr. Snow's work with Marcel's father, Dr. Achille Adrien Proust, who was an epidemiologist who devoted much of his life to fighting cholera, and is largely responsible for developing the "cordon sanitaire" technique. There is also the problem, particularly prominent at the publisher, Penguin, (Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope and Survival fame) of not taking the time to run the manuscript through spell-check. The editing, particularly towards the end was shoddy - saying the same thing about the 1918 flu epidemic, thrice, in three pages. Despite these shortcomings, I would have given the book 5-stars if he had stopped around page 200.
The last 50 pages should have been prefaced with that classic cover from the "New Yorker," that shows the world in wildly distorted proportion, with Manhattan consuming about 80% of it, Jersey as a distant shore, San Francisco a remote dot, and all of China a smaller and more remote one still. Johnson is an unabashed New Yorker, (and yes, as the cliché has it, it is a great place to visit, but...) and he apparently believes that the world would be a better place if we all lived like they do in the Big Apple. "We are now, as a species, dependent on dense urban living as a survival strategy" (p 236). Pleeeze. Some of us in the "fly-over zone" would demur. Johnson asserts with the aplomb and certainty of Edwin Chadwick, one of the chief miasmaists who propounded the "All Smell is Disease" dogma.
As a few other reviewers have commented, it is rather ironic that there are large dollops of miasma-theory supporter thought processes behind Johnson's statements made in the final pages. All the contradictory evidence is set aside when "I (heart) NYC." Is New York really the greenest city in the United States, aside from an article in - no surprise here- "The New Yorker"? Density as an engine of wealth creation? How many trillion did Wall Street just vaporize? Density leads to population reduction? Or is it increased income levels that makes the "human" Social Security of many children no longer necessary? And then the long ramble about terrorist threats was sophomoric, at best, with nary a thought as to how to reduce or eliminate these threats. It is not that terrorism, fossil fuel depletion, or the threat of a new epidemic are not real issues to be considered in rationale discourse, but how could you NOT mention America's, and even New York's massive reliance on foreign capital, and foreigners to supply us the necessities of life, while so many able Americans are unemployed as being the central issue that must be resolved: an equitable distribution of the wealth of society. I just finished reading Thoreau's Walden, and what a stunning contrast.
Overall, the last section should be dropped, or re-worked, with much more critical thought, including some input from beyond the Hudson River, and perhaps made into its own stand-alone book. Combining the excellent portions of the book, with a shoddy ending: 3-stars.
When its good, its very good - but when its bad, it stinks June 19, 2010
doc peterson (Portland, Oregon USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I have strongly mixed reactions to _Ghost Map_. On the one hand, its descriptions of Victorian England (especially the poor classes) and the epidemiology of the cholera epidemic of 1854-5 are truly outstanding. However Johnson's discussion of the "miasma theory" of disease is lackluster, and his concluding chapters on London's sewer system, the issue of sanitation in the 21st century, and of infectious disease in general is bloody awful.
In an effort to be less curmudgeonly, I will focus on the book's merits. London's santitation issues are the stuff of legend (climaxing in "the Great Stink" of 1858), given the city's rapid growth in the industrial age, and it lack of accompanying santitation. Johnson's graphic detail of the filth - and of the poor who eked out a living picking through the refuse - was masterful. That Londoners were able to make a living picking up dog dropppings, or scooping up bucketsful of sewage from overflowing privys were details I was heretofore unaware of. The symbiotic relationship between the city and these humble laborers (and their comparison to the relationship on a microbial scale) brilliantly tied the issue of disease and bacteria to real people in a real time and place. The synthesis of efforts by Dr. Snow and Rev. Whitehead in discovering the vector of cholera (and in preventing further spread of disease) was similarly brilliant. Had the book exclusively focused on these elements and left it at that, I would award it five stars. Yet Johnson (and his editors) would not leave well enough alone.
While I do recommend the book - it is fascinating reading, the last 1/5 of the book was a real effort to push through. The chapter on miasma, while relevant to the broader scientific argument around vectors (and the means to the end of the epidemic) slowed the pace of the book. A great summer read, and an incentive to drink tea (or perhaps to treat your tonic water with a little gin.)
The scheme of things May 30, 2010
Jay Dickson (Portland, OR)
Steven Johnson is at heart a Victorian; this is both his weakness as a writer and his greatest strength. The downside of Johnson's THE GHOST MAP, a history of the infamous 1854 London cholera epidemic that was traced back eventually (in a historical first) to a contaminated water-pump in Broad Street, Soho, is that Johnson emulates too heartily the style and the temper of the writers he apparently studied as a graduate student in the Columbia English program. Ever fond of cosmic ironies, Johnson goes in too much for portentous overstatements and the had-he-but-known-then style of commentaries of Dickens or Bulwer-Lytton. You are also always very aware of his enthusiastic admiration of the heroes of his tale, Dr. John Snow (the pioneer of Victorian anesthesiology and sometime attendant to the childbirths of Queen Victoria herself) and the Rev. Henry Whitehead, the Soho clergyman who verified Snow's thesis that contaminated water was literally the source of the epidemic. Johnson has also mastered one of the best abilities of the great Victorian stylists: the ability to shift his narrative from small detail to the much larger picture, so that we have a good sense of what was at stake in this battle against contamination, and when the study fans out in its strong final chapters to consider questions of urban studies in general, in particular the dangers inherent in the coming megalopolises of the 21st century. While this may not be the very best among the many scholarly (but accessible) scientific histories that became a publishing trend starting Dava Sobel's LONGITUDE fifteen years ago, it's still quite intriguing and well worth reading.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 142
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