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Usually ships in 1 business days | | | Starred Review. On August 28, 1854, working-class Londoner Sarah Lewis tossed a bucket of soiled water into the cesspool of her squalid apartment building and triggered the deadliest outbreak of cholera in the city's history. In this tightly written page-turner, Johnson (Everything Bad Is Good for You) uses his considerable skill to craft a story of suffering, perseverance and redemption that echoes to the present day. Describing a city and culture experiencing explosive growth, with its attendant promise and difficulty, Johnson builds the story around physician John Snow. In the face of a horrifying epidemic, Snow (pioneering developer of surgical anesthesia) posited the then radical theory that cholera was spread through contaminated water rather than through miasma, or smells in the air. Against considerable resistance from the medical and bureaucratic establishment, Snow persisted and, with hard work and groundbreaking research, helped to bring about a fundamental change in our understanding of disease and its spread. Johnson weaves in overlapping ideas about the growth of civilization, the organization of cities, and evolution to thrilling effect. From Snow's discovery of patient zero to Johnson's compelling argument for and celebration of cities, this makes for an illuminating and satisfying read. B&w illus. (Oct.)
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| | Product Details | | Author: | Steven Johnson | | Paperback: | 320 pages | | Publisher: | Riverhead Trade | | Publication Date: | October 02, 2007 | | ISBN: | 1594482691 | | Package Length: | 8.0 inches | | Package Width: | 5.4 inches | | Package Height: | 0.8 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.6 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 96 reviews |
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Where has your drinking water been? Sep 06, 2008
The difficulty in reading about centuries past is adopting the mindset of those who lived then; how can we, with our 21st century knowledge, grasp a world in which people washed their babies' diapers next to the local drinking supply and thought nothing of it? Yet, Johnson weaves such a detailed picture of London life at the time that the commonplace miscomprehensions held by both the academics and uneducated are understandable. Johnson's greatest narrative gift is capturing the extent of the devastation and its commonplace nature in 19th century London, where people lived with the constant threat of epidemic.
The last fifth of the book is given over to Johnson's theorizing about the future of city planning, trying to tie it into the work of the pioneering researchers of the cholera outbreak. This non sequitur weakens the overall book, but only slightly. The mystery is real, the medical discoveries ingenious and Johnson's research and narrative compelling.
 a frightening lesson for us all Sep 05, 2008
The Ghost Map describes a series of events more than a centory and a half ago, but the warnings are still timely. Crowding vast numbers or people together without proper sanitation and with primitive understanding of medicine is a deadly cocktail, and cholera the villain of the book is still frequent killer in the underdeveloped world. WE must all stay alert to te potential ravages of lethal diseases. The book is a sharp warning against complacency and at the same time a captivating good read.
The Ghost Map Aug 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 Aug 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 Aug 09, 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.
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