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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 | 
 enlarge | Author: Steven Johnson
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Discount Category: Book
Selling Price: $15.00
Buy Used: $5.80
Potential Savings: $9.20 (61%)
New (57) Used (63) from $5.80
Customer Ratings:  104 comments
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1 Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (pounds): 0.6
Dimensions (inch): 8 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 1594482691
Dewey Decimal Number: 941
EAN: 9781594482694
Publication Date: October 2, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New book (remainder mark/cover will have some shelf wear or small tear, bent corner or crease)
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| Customer Comments:
 The Ghost Map August 30, 2008
A fascinating read, in fact, the story line that weaves the two main characters together, Snow and Whitehead, has an almost cinematic sense of drama especially set against the Dickensian squalor of mid nineteenth century London.
Dan Mandish
Read this book and you'll have a new-found appreciation for toilets, clean water and water treatment plants August 28, 2008
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.
Nothing Scary About Ghost Map August 9, 2008
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.
Nice read July 28, 2008
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.
Can We See the Actual Map? July 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this comment useful.
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.
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