
The Ghost Map: A Street, an Epidemic and the Hidden Power of Urban Networks. (Paperback)
Steven Johnson (author)Published: 31/01/2008

A riveting historical medical mystery, Johnson’s page-turning account of London’s Victorian cholera epidemic is a scintillating slice of narrative non-fiction. Focusing on the pioneering work of two medics in defeating the disease, The Ghost Map presents an enthralling picture of innovation and the triumph of research over superstition.
From the bestselling author of Everything Bad is Good For You, Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map vividly recreates Victorian London to show how huge populations live together, how cities can kill - and how they can save us.
Steven Johnson is one of today's most exciting writers about popular culture, urban living and new technology. In The Ghost Map he tells the story of the terrifying cholera epidemic that engulfed London in 1854, and the two unlikely heroes - anesthetist Doctor John Snow and affable clergyman Reverend Henry Whitehead - who defeated the disease through a combination of local knowledge, scientific research and map-making.
In telling their extraordinary story, Steven Johnson also explores a whole world of ideas and connections, from urban terror to microbes, ecosystems to the Great Stink, cultural phenomena to street life.
'A wonderful book'
Mail on Sunday
'A thumping page-turner'
Daily Telegraph
'Enthralling ... vivid and gripping'
New Statesman
'Exhilarating'
Spectator
'It is a rattling scientific mystery, but in the hands of Steven Johnson it becomes something much richer ... a vast, interconnected picture about urban and bacterial life ... it is difficult to do justice to the exuberance of Johnson's ideas'
Scotland on Sunday
Steven Johnson is the author of the acclaimed books Everything Bad is Good for You, Mind Wide Open, Where Good Ideas Come From, Emergence and Interface Culture. His writing appeared in the Guardian, the New Yorker, Nation and Harper's, as well as the op-ed pages of The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He is a Distinguished Writer In Residence at NYU's School Of Journalism, and a Contributing Editor to Wired.
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780141029368
Number of pages: 320
Weight: 236 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 18 mm
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“From cholera to H5N1 – the power of consilient thinking.”
This gripping book is so much more than an historical recount. It amounts to nothing less than a manual of how statistics, cartography and empiricism overcame superstition saving us from cholera and offering the means... More
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