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The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World Hardcover – October 19, 2006

by Steven Johnson (Author)

2,496 ratings

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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and commerce, teeming with people from all over the world, continually pushing the limits of infrastructure that's outdated as soon as it's updated.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.

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Editorial Reviews

From Bookmarks Magazine

In books such as Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, Steven Johnson neatly draws connections between seemingly unconnected aspects of lifethink of James Burke in the digital age. The Ghost Map is no different in applying a 21st-century sensibility to a 19th-century cholera epidemic. According to critics, Johnson makes a single tactical error in the last pages, where he attempts to link the events he describes to too many other contemporary historical trends while ignoring some real-world realities. Regardless, the story is in capable hands, and the lives of individuals and a culture on the cusp of technological and medical advance resonates with readers 150 years later.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* More than two million people were squeezed into 30 square miles in Victorian London, producing massive quantities of waste that, before modern public waste disposal systems, fouled both land and the Thames River. Indeed, Johnson says, "No extended description of London from that period failed to mention the stench of the city." Some, called miasmatists, believed foul odors caused disease. Many believed the lifestyles of the poor and ignorant masses made them more susceptible to illness. Thus, in late summer of 1854, when cholera began claiming poor -working-class residents of the Golden Square neighborhood, popular opinion blamed the city's excavation of a nearby burial ground. But Dr. John Snow, an anesthesia expert and consultant to the queen, and the Reverend Henry Whitehead thought the pathogen might have a different source. Their dogged efforts soon ended the deadly epidemic. They demonstrated that Vibrio cholerae had been contracted by drinking contaminated water from the neighborhood pump. In the short run, Snow and Whitehead saved hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives. In the long run, their work, part of which consisted of mapping the disease's spread, resulted in efficient public waste disposal systems and disease control measures that saved millions worldwide. And that work is hardly done. Donna Chavez
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Riverhead Hardcover
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 19, 2006
Edition ‏ : ‎ First Edition
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1594489254
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1594489259
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.34 x 1.13 x 9.28 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #841,656 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8 in Communicable Diseases (Books)
- #15 in History of Medicine (Books)
- #87 in Scientist Biographies
Customer Reviews:
2,496 ratings

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Steven Johnson

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Steven Johnson is the best-selling author of seven books on the intersection of science, technology and personal experience. His writings have influenced everything from the way political campaigns use the Internet, to cutting-edge ideas in urban planning, to the battle against 21st-century terrorism. In 2010, he was chosen by Prospect magazine as one of the Top Ten Brains of the Digital Future.

His latest book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, was a finalist for the 800CEORead award for best business book of 2010, and was ranked as one of the year’s best books by The Economist. His book The Ghost Map was one of the ten best nonfiction books of 2006 according to Entertainment Weekly. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Steven has also co-created three influential web sites: the pioneering online magazine FEED, the Webby-Award-winning community site, Plastic.com, and most recently the hyperlocal media site outside.in, which was acquired by AOL in 2011. He serves on the advisory boards of a number of Internet-related companies, including Meetup.com, Betaworks, and Nerve.

Steven is a contributing editor to Wired magazine and is the 2009 Hearst New Media Professional-in-Residence at The Journalism School, Columbia University. He won the Newhouse School fourth annual Mirror Awards for his TIME magazine cover article titled "How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live." Steven has also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and many other periodicals. He has appeared on many high-profile television programs, including The Charlie Rose Show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He lectures widely on technological, scientific, and cultural issues. He blogs at stevenberlinjohnson.com and is @stevenbjohnson on Twitter. He lives in Marin County, California with his wife and three sons.

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Customer reviews

2,496 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find this book engaging and well-researched, with a gripping true story filled with fact-based twists and turns. Moreover, the writing style is praised for being well-told, and customers consider it essential reading, particularly for medical and public administration communities. Additionally, they appreciate the historical context, with one customer noting how it chronicles the beginning of public health, while others highlight how it spawns the foundations of epidemiology.

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Reading quality Information quality Story quality Writing style Readability Historical context Epidemiology Interest

155 customers mention "Reading quality"137 positive18 negative

Customers find the book fascinating and engaging, with one customer noting it's more of an enjoyable read than a chore.

"This is the best book I’ve read on the London cholera outbreak. Very interesting and informative." Read more

"Well written and interesting how the cause of cholera was finally discovered in London during 1854...." Read more

"Great read. I happily learned a great deal and will seek out other books by this author. Time well spent." Read more

"...It is a fascinating, cyclical framing device that allows the reader to understand just how smoothly all the pieces fit together...." Read more

112 customers mention "Information quality"106 positive6 negative

Customers praise the book's information quality, noting it is well researched and presents facts in an interesting way.

"...Very interesting and informative." Read more

"The coverage in this book of the cholera epidemic in Soho was very informative and enjoyable to read...." Read more

"Well written, very well researched. The detail really brings home how dark and squalid life in Victorian London was if you were poor...." Read more

"Excellently researched and written. Informative, yet presented in such a way as to engage the reader as if he/she were reading a fictive mystery...." Read more

86 customers mention "Story quality"77 positive9 negative

Customers find the book's story engaging, describing it as a compelling and highly entertaining narrative that reads like a classic mystery, with one customer noting its fact-based twists and turns.

"...Johnson tells an interesting story of the different men involved in uncovering (and hindering) the source of cholera in London at a time when no..." Read more

"...outbreaks in Victorian London or not, this is an interesting story about two determined men, public health, and how much city life has and hasn't..." Read more

"...puts you off (naturally it should) please don't let it, the story is fascinating and of real importance to suburbs in America and slums in India/Asia..." Read more

"This story has it all - adventure, mystery, London geography, epidemiology, and fascinating people...." Read more

58 customers mention "Writing style"54 positive4 negative

Customers praise the writing style of the book, describing it as well told and remarkable, with one customer noting its close-to-the-action narrative approach.

"Well written, very well researched. The detail really brings home how dark and squalid life in Victorian London was if you were poor...." Read more

"...The Ghost Map is an engrossing read, well written, scholarly, yet dramatic too. It will appeal to historians and fans of medical detection alike." Read more

"...Very well written." Read more

"very well researched and written. It appears that Steven Johnson is able to take almost any subject and document it in an interesting manner...." Read more

55 customers mention "Readability"49 positive6 negative

Customers find the book highly readable, describing it as essential reading that reads like a textbook and is particularly suitable for students and professionals in medical and public administration fields.

"...This book is 332 pages, easy to read, and engaging. The author is Steven Johnson. Steven Johnson is the host of the series “How We Got to Now.”..." Read more

"...history and culture, plus medical mysteries, this is a fascinating, fast read. I learned so much!..." Read more

"...Well-researched and readable, with much to learn by the reader...." Read more

"This is a must read for technologists...." Read more

53 customers mention "Historical context"52 positive1 negative

Customers appreciate the historical context of the book, describing it as an enlightening and fascinating medical narrative that reads like fiction.

"This is history which reads like fiction! For anyone who likes English history and culture, plus medical mysteries, this is a fascinating, fast read...." Read more

"This book is a fantastic review of the events that changed the way the world viewed epidemics and illness...." Read more

"I am glad to be retired and able to read the history/and new discoveries of many medical issues. It is very good. Julie" Read more

"Very well written and detailed account of the cholera outbreak in London related to the Broad Street Pump. Factual yet entertaining." Read more

41 customers mention "Epidemiology"39 positive2 negative

Customers appreciate the book's focus on epidemiology, noting how it spawns the foundations of the field and serves as a triumph for public health.

"...amalgam of detective narrative, Victorian history and psychology, epidemiology, public health history, a sociological consideration of the human..." Read more

"...or not, this is an interesting story about two determined men, public health, and how much city life has and hasn't changed." Read more

"...The book describes the birth of modern epidemiology as it arose in response to a virulent outbreak of cholera in a particular 1854 London..." Read more

"...Notably, the people that worked at the brewery didn’t experience illness or death even though they were a block away from the pump...." Read more

34 customers mention "Interest"30 positive4 negative

Customers find the book's topic fascinating, with one customer noting it provides an engaging real-world adventure, while another describes it as a sociological study of London.

"The good: The subject matter is very interesting. The descriptions early on of the various scavenging clans in London is really top notch...." Read more

"...Overall, I’d recommend this book for its engaging portrayal of what it was like to live in 1854 London and to learn more about how humanity started..." Read more

"...I found the link between medicine and the pastor interesting - especially that they both knew their communities but saw them in different ways...." Read more

"...Parts of the epilogue seem quite relevant...." Read more

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B R Sanders
the most captivating book about cholera you will read
Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2013
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The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson, is very close to a perfect book. The book describes the birth of modern epidemiology as it arose in response to a virulent outbreak of cholera in a particular 1854 London neighborhood. If you, unlike me, are not horribly enthralled by cholera or nerdily swoon at epidemiology, this has the potential to be a very dry read. And, in fact, going into this book I already knew the story of this particular outbreak of cholera because I’d read about it in much less gripping books about Victorian medicine. What makes The Ghost Map different, and what makes it the kind of book that I now want to thrust into the unsuspecting hands of everyone I know, is that it does a remarkable job contextualizing the outbreak such that you, as a modern reader who likely has no direct experience of cholera, understands the absolute terror the Londoners felt in this outbreak. You feel the visceral urgency that comes with that terror, the awful need to unravel what the horrible riddle that was cholera.

Much of the book follows Dr. Jon Snow, who is an interesting historical figure in his own right. A pioneer of anesthesiology, Jon Snow also had a fascination with cholera. It was he who, without the aid of developed germ theory, deduced that cholera must be waterborne and traced the outbreak back to a particular water pump on Broad Street. The Ghost Map has shades of narrative non-fiction, just enough to draw Jon Snow and the other players as real people, complete people with thoughts and tragic flaws and beating hearts. The book never tips fully over into narrative non-fiction, restraining itself enough that it does not speak for these historical figures, which I appreciated.

But to say that this is a book about Jon Snow’s prodigious scientific contributions is to give it short shrift. The real strength of the book is that it takes this single narrative thread—Jon Snow’s proto-epidemiological investigations into the 1854 cholera outbreak—and locates it in a myriad of nested lenses. This narrative thread is explored from the lens of the microbial cholera itself, describing cholera’s life cycle and the way cholera adapted to the new context of a dense and dirty human metropolis. This narrative thread is explored from the sociological lens of why Snow’s waterborne theory had to fight so hard to gain traction against the classist and Social Darwinist competing miasmatic theory of cholera transmission. Ultimately, the unifying element of the book is that Stevenson frames the 1854 cholera outbreak in terms of waste recycling—he starts the book with descriptions of the London underclasses who survived by compiling and moving and disposing of the mountains of human waste that Victorian London produced. He frames microbes as creatures whose waste products ultimately gave rise to multicellular creatures like ourselves. It is a fascinating, cyclical framing device that allows the reader to understand just how smoothly all the pieces fit together.

If you are interested in medicine, or the human body, or biological systems, or cityscapes, or Victorian England or just really good non-fiction I cannot recommend this book enough.

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AMYN
A Very Intriguing Book, Can't Wait to Read Again!
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2016
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The Ghost Map is a historical book about the SoHo outbreak of cholera in 1854. This book is 332 pages, easy to read, and engaging. The author is Steven Johnson. Steven Johnson is the host of the series “How We Got to Now.” This show explores innovations through time to explain how we got to modern times. Examples are: clean, cold, sound, glass, etc.

This book weaves science and history together into an interesting story. I liked how it was about two different scientists who had two different views of how cholera spread. One scientist, Henry Whitehead, thought it spread by air. Another scientist, John Snow, thought it spread by water.

The cholera outbreak happened because there were leaky sewers that let human waste leak into the underground water reservoirs that the Broad St. pump was connected to. The sewers were brand new. They were installed about a year before the outbreak. The “dirty water” from the Bridal St. pump and the Canary St. pump was actually better than the Broad St. pump "clean water."

John Snow discovered this by mapping out the deaths in his little town of SoHo where the outbreak was. The people with their own private wells didn’t experience illness or death.
John Snow also asked residents who had deaths outside of the zone where they got their water from, and most of them said they walked the extra distance to Broad St. because it looked cleaner. Notably, the people that worked at the brewery didn’t experience illness or death even though they were a block away from the pump. They drank beer not water. These people proved that the illness couldn't be from a cloud of cholera-infected gas.

They didn’t fix the sewers until two years later when they realized human waste leaks were the cause. Once the scientists believed John Snow’s theory about water spreading cholera, they went looking for a reason and discovered human waste was the cause. They found a leak really close to the Broad St. pump. The Broad St. pump handle was removed and people stopped getting sick. There was difference in people getting sick and dying within three days. Only people who had stocked up on Broad St. water continued to get sick, but those who didn’t stopped getting sick. Within two weeks the deaths stopped.

I think Steven Johnson achieved his goal in making this book interesting, enough that I read it all at once. I liked how he took a big event and made a story by talking about the people involved.
-Linus, Age 9

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Guido Carlos Levi
Imperdivel para quem gosta de História.
Reviewed in Brazil on July 16, 2020
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Fora de série. Utilizei muitas informações num livro que escreví(Doenças que mudaram a História).

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Lannoy29
Brillant!
Reviewed in France on October 27, 2015
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Étude tout simplement brillante. L'auteur nous offre une plongée passionnante dans la quête du docteur Snow pour comprendre les modalités de diffusion du choléra ainsi que tous ses efforts, accompagné du révérend Whitehead, pour convaincre les différents (et nombreux) acteurs politiques locaux du bien-fondé de sa théorie. Enfin, ce livre est aussi l'occasion de voir naître la première carte géographique s'appuyant sur le big-data.

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Nan
New science emerges from cholera epidemic
Reviewed in Canada on January 5, 2014
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The time of Victoria and Dickens, London's sky's are grey, the Thames a cesspool and in a tiny street in SOHO a baby dies. Western medicine is unable to save or even find the cause of the disease.
One doctor and one cleric create a new method and proof to stop the death toll from rising.
Enjoyable read, full of local London history and lessons for modern cities.

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Peter
Brilliant
Reviewed in Japan on January 3, 2016
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Such a stroke of genius to plot death on a map and recognized patterns that indicated the source of disease.While others were convinced the disease was carried in the air, Snow recognised it to be water born... Super story

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Hubert Munzo
Fascinante
Reviewed in Mexico on November 12, 2017
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Excelente perspectiva histórico-científica del Londres del siglo XIX... Es recorrer Londres en su época de consolidación como la ciudad esplendor de un imperio en apogeo...

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The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World Hardcover – October 19, 2006

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5.0 out of 5 stars the most captivating book about cholera you will read

4.0 out of 5 stars A Very Intriguing Book, Can't Wait to Read Again!

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars Imperdivel para quem gosta de História.

5.0 out of 5 stars Brillant!

5.0 out of 5 stars New science emerges from cholera epidemic

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinante

the most captivating book about cholera you will read

A Very Intriguing Book, Can't Wait to Read Again!

Imperdivel para quem gosta de História.

Brillant!

New science emerges from cholera epidemic

Brilliant

Fascinante