The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson is one of those books that has absolutely everything in it.
History.
Public health.
Perspicacious detectives.
Data presentation.
Globalization.
God.
Politics.
A subterranean world.
Microbiology.
A lot of talk of sewerage.
Ok, maybe that doesn’t sound like a great read to everyone, but Johnson’s book about the infamous SoHo cholera outbreak of 1854 is freaking rollercoaster, touching on myriad subjects and making you feel like you’re a bit of an expert in each of them.
“The opposition between civilization and barbarism was practically as old as the walled city itself...But Engels and Dickens suggested a new twist: that the advance of of civilization produces barbarity as an unavoidable waste product, as essential to its metabolism as the gleaming spires and cultured thought of polite society. The barbarians weren’t storming the gates. They were being bred from within.”
Johnson has this great way of writing that reads like a novel while conveying rich and complicated historical events, theory of human thought, and problems of “modernization.” He manages to make all of these subjects easily digestible for the average reader without making it feel like he’s talking down to you. Heck, you can basically feel his enthusiasm for his subject matter leaking through the pages.
For any public health nerd, this is a must-read. This was one of those midnight downloads on Kindle for me; I didn’t realize that one of the protagonists of this story is actually John Snow, who is somewhat of a human mascot for my graduate school, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (is there a secular version of a patron saint?). Snow is commonly regarded as the father of modern epidemiology, and I figured I knew my John Snow. I mean, we have a replica of the famous water pump (#spoilers) outside our main auditorium. Our school bar is called the Pump Handle. Like, we’re really into him.
But clearly I was just fronting this whole time because I learned so much more about Snow, his accomplishments, and the complexities of his character from this book. As an added bonus, The Ghost Map is equally about Snow’s partner in investigation, the often overlooked but integral to history, Henry Whitehead.
I don’t want to describe the book too much because part of the fun of this one is not knowing what you’ll be diving into on each new page, but it is truly a historical page-turner. The only critique I have is Johnson’s epilogue; while the book’s conclusion leaves you feeling intelligently optimistic, the epilogue takes the ready through a nightmarish waterslide of apocalypse and salvation that ultimately leaves the reader feeling overwhelmed and confused.
It seems as though Johnson got to the end of his book and wasn’t quite ready to let go. Johnson, cut the prologue and start pouring it into a follow-up book; if it’s half as good as The Ghost Map I’ll devour it completely.