The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

I’m a fan of Steven Johnson. He wrote, “Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter.” He’s written other stuff, but I’ve only read that one, and some articles he’s written. Bright guy.

Some time ago I saw a video of a presentation he gave at TED about his book on the London cholera epidemic of 1854. It was a fascinating presentation and it piqued my interest in the book. Now the book is available in paperback. And the publisher has produced perhaps the coolest website ever done for a book. I plan to go buy a copy and begin reading it soon.

This is from the inside flap of the book:

It is the summer of 1854. Cholera has seized London with unprecedented intensity. A metropolis of more than 2 million people, London is just emerging as a one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure necessary to support its dense population - garbage removal, clean water, sewers - the city has become the perfect breeding ground for a terrifying disease no one knows how to cure.

As their neighbors begin dying, two men are spurred to action: the Reverend Henry Whitehead, whose faith in a benevolent God is shaken by the seemingly random nature of the victims, and Dr. John Snow, whose ideas about contagion have been dismissed by the scientific community, but who is convinced that he knows how the disease is being transmitted. In a riveting day-by-day account, The Ghost Map chronicles the outbreak’s spread and the desperate efforts to put an end to the epidemic - and solve the most pressing medical riddle of the age.

The Ghost Map is the chilling story of urban terror, but it is also a story of how scientific understanding can advance in the most hostile of environments. In a triumph of dynamic, multidisciplinary thinking, Steven Johnson examines the epidemic from the microbial level to the human level to the urban level. Brilliantly illuminating the intertwined histories of the spread of disease, the rise of cities, and the nature of scientific inquiry, Johnson presents both vivid history and a powerful, provocative explanation of how it has shaped the world we live in.