Science news and science current events, research and discoveries.
Top science news articles and science current events stories from the past week.
Science Resources
Science RSS News Feeds
Earth, Life and Space Science RSS News Feeds.
|
 |
 |
 |
| View Larger Image | The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
by Steven Johnson
| | List Price: | $15.00 |  | | 9 New starting at: | $12.44 | | 7 Used starting at: | $11.00 | | | | | Sales Rank: | 86701 | | Studio: | Riverhead Trade | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 320 | | Publication Date: | October 02, 2007 | | Publisher: | Riverhead Trade |
| |
FORMATS |
|
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
A thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London-and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world.
From the dynamic thinker routinely compared to Malcolm Gladwell, E. O. Wilson, and James Gleick, The Ghost Map is a riveting page-turner with a real-life historical hero that brilliantly illuminates the intertwined histories of the spread of viruses, rise of cities, and the nature of scientific inquiry. These are topics that have long obsessed Steven Johnson, and The Ghost Map is a true triumph of the kind of multidisciplinary thinking for which he's become famous-a book that, like the work of Jared Diamond, presents both vivid history and a powerful and provocative explanation of what it means for the world we live in.
The Ghost Map takes place in the summer of 1854. A devastating cholera outbreak seizes London just as it is emerging as a modern city: more than 2 million people packed into a ten-mile circumference, a hub of travel and commerce, teeming with people from all over the world, continually pushing the limits of infrastructure that's outdated as soon as it's updated. Dr. John Snow-whose ideas about contagion had been dismissed by the scientific community-is spurred to intense action when the people in his neighborhood begin dying. With enthralling suspense, Johnson chronicles Snow's day-by-day efforts, as he risks his own life to prove how the epidemic is being spread.
When he creates the map that traces the pattern of outbreak back to its source, Dr. Snow didn't just solve the most pressing medical riddle of his time. He ultimately established a precedent for the way modern city-dwellers, city planners, physicians, and public officials think about the spread of disease and the development of the modern urban environment.
The Ghost Map is an endlessly compelling and utterly gripping account of that London summer of 1854, from the microbial level to the macrourban-theory level-including, most important, the human level. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 93 reviews)
|
Read this book and you'll have a new-found appreciation for toilets, clean water and water treatment plants 
This book should make you appreciate how far public health and sanitation have come in the past 150 years. Did you know, most of modern society's gains in life expectancy precede major medical breakthroughs like antibiotics? You can thank improvements in water, sanitation and housing. This book highlights the inviolable fact that preventing someone else's poop from entering your mouth is a good thing. Thank God and John Snow for water treatment plants.
August 28, 2008 | |
Nothing Scary About Ghost Map
Steven Johnson's Ghost Map is the fascinating story of the beginning of modern public health. It highlights the desperate search for the cause of a London cholera epidemic in the 1850's. The book has the pace and readability of a medical thriller combined with strong science/invetigational story telling. While the science end of the story shines, the reader still feels the human suffering of this tragic event. I liked the book so much I bought multiple copies to give to other teachers.
August 09, 2008 | |
Nice read 
Discovered Mr. Johnson's book via a column by George Will in the Washington Post online a few weeks ago. I've read many books on the plague and primitive medicine. Mr. Johnson's book was more a detective novel with the source of the cholera as the culprit.
Overall, the book is well written and quite amusing (especially when he holds-forth on the prevailing notion of a "miasma" source----if it "stinks, it kills"). But herein lies the rub; Mr. Johnson repeatedly presents the "theory of evolution" as fact. He extols the scientific process employed by Dr. Snow (whom he credits with discovering the source of cholera), while presenting the "theory" matter-of-factly. I'm no advocate of "intelligent design" (but I don't discount it), and the purpose of the book was not to "prove" evolution---however I found it ironic for the author to applaud the scientific basis of Dr. Snow's discovery while passing off a "theory" in several points as fact. This however is a literary nit---and I've recommended this book to friends who enjoy the genre, and marked-up my copy for future reference.
Recommended.
July 28, 2008 | |
Can We See the Actual Map?
Steven Johnson's book, The Ghost Map, tells the story of how a doctor, John Snow, and a local minister, Henry Whitehead, worked together to combat an outbreak of cholera in their London neighborhood. They did so by conducting on the spot investigation which allowed them to demonstrate that the cholera was being transmitted through the water supply at the Broad Street pump. This demonstration was illustrated through the famous "ghost map" that showed the cluster of illness around the pump which, in turn, famously, led to the removal of the pump handle to combat the outbreak.
Mr. Johnson does a fair job of telling this story. The strength of his telling lies in how he reminds us how far our understanding of disease has come in the past couple centuries. In an era where disease is so much better controlled through hygiene and treatment, it is so easy to forget how diseases like cholera, plague and smallpox would periodically devastate populations--diseases that are now essentially unknown in the developed world.
Yet, in the summer of 1854, the best medical authorities still believed that cholera was an effect of "miasma," the inhalation of foul odors carried through the air. Scientific rigor was becoming part of medicine by this time, however, and Dr. Snow had hypothesized some years before this outbreak that cholera was carried in the water supply. What he was lacking was proof, which the outbreak of 1854 gave him the opportunity to try to supply. And supply his proof he did, despite the fact that it would be some time before his conclusions were accepted even in the face of very convincing evidence, like the "ghost map."
Mr. Johnson relates these pieces of the story very well. What he does less well is bring these people vividly to life. Only Dr. Snow really seems to be fully three-dimensional in Johnson's story. Whitehead, Farr, Chadwick and others flit around the edges of this story like so many ghosts and never seem to be full-bodied people. It was also disappointing that, despite the title, we are not provided with a picture or color reproduction of this revolutionary map. Being able to examine the actual map would have been a nice addition to the text.
Still, there is much of value here. Despite some bells and whistles that would have added energy to the prose, the story of disease and science takes center stage in this book. It is a nice reminder of the good science can do and the struggle that scientists often have to undergo to have new ideas break through.
July 10, 2008 | |
Where were the editors? 
I just finished Steven Johnson's "Ghost Map". Not to be rude, but how does this stuff get published? For Pete's sake, the name of the book is ghost map, and there is not even a copy of the ghost map in the book.
The book itself lacks any kind of literary punch. Ostensibly about John Snow and cholera, in which there is probably an interesting story if told with focus, Johnson rambles pointlessly around campy urban planning doggerel.
I guess Johnson's reputation is so unassailable that editors don't bother to read what they publish. And that is what the book lacks, an editor.
The worst part is Johnson's attack on the foolish orthodoxy of the miasmaists, while he dutifully regurgitates the junior-high platitudes to Darwinist orthodoxy, when doing so adds absolutely nothing to the story, except to confirm his own Party loyalty.
June 29, 2008 | |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| |
|
|
|
|
