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 Like fiction Oct 02, 2008
Steven Johnson gets draw a clasical Snow's Story like a fiction but anchored to the reality throught tree "dramatic lines":
1. The comming of a epidemiology like a new science.
2. The borning of geographic inference. How we can infer what happen in the micro world trough the macro world.
3. A case of honestity betwen ancient believes performer and a science man.
Those tree treadsare weaved by the story with presence of tautness moments and characters take the good side or de bad side in diferent moments.
The story is simple but well workred. A terrific dreadful sillnes apears in London, a bunch of corpses flood the streets. Nothing knows that to do. Church performer says that the gulty is the miasma. Miasma is a very strange conccept that does not means although nothing, buy can be seen like a phantom that travels by air taking amay litle pieces of sickness. The miasma can be produced by a god desicion. Who say that is Henry Whithead whose name would look have been taked from a fiction.
An anestesiologist apears in scene. He beginings to arrange the geografic information ponting each one of the dies, one point in the died person home. This hero is John Snow whose name looks like from fiction too.
Both persons debate about. But the stronger is the religious man. Trhough the worked maps, Snow get convince to Whitehead. Whitehead convince easely to goverment. And goverment close the water bombs getting in this way the victory over siknes the other character named cholera.
Is a good book but the map that present is just a part of the complet work. This book is good for teacheing, for enterteinement and for general culture too.
 Good book, but Kindle edition falls short Sep 30, 2008
This was the first book I purchased for my Kindle, based on a friend's recommendation (who had read the print version). I found it a very enjoyable read, and it will be especially appealing to those interested in epidemiology, statistical graphics, and medical history.
However, if you care at all about annotations and such, I recommend you get it in print, not as a Kindle e-book. The book has very extensive notes at the end. I have to believe that these notes are numbered, and that there are superscripts in the main text of the printed version that reference these notes. However, in the Kindle edition, there are no links to these notes (even though such linking is possible), and there is no way to associate a given end note with a location in the text. I doubt that I would have interrupted my reading to follow many such notes, but I certainly would have done so a FEW times on topics of particular interest to me, and the inability to do so is a big loss.
The Kindle edition also includes the complete index, minus page numbers, and again with no links. This is not as big a problem, as one can use the search feature to find those locations.
What I wonder now is if this lack of linkage to end notes is the norm for Kindle books, or whether The Ghost Map is unusual in that respect. I suppose I will be pretty leery of reading nonfiction in this format in the future. This e-book cost me less than the printed form -- but I also received significantly less.
Another general note on the book is that it is disappointing that it does not display the second version of Snow's map (with voronoi boundaries) that is discussed in the conclusions. It would seem that this would be the "title map" so it is a curious omission.
Mapping a mystery Sep 29, 2008
Interesting retelling of the London Cholera outbreak in 1854, and how a physician and a pastor working on the edges of their disciplines solved the mystery and drew the "ghost map" of deaths which pointed to the source of the disease.
Bogs down when Johnson generalizes to the benefit of modern cities to the economy, the environment, and world health. Yeah, maybe, but I'm not sure Johnson proves the point or rather I'm fairly sure that Johnson over-reaches the evidence to try to prove his point.
Edwin Tufte references this map extensively in his book Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative as a positive example of the power of proper visual display of information.
Good read Sep 19, 2008
My first introduction to John Snow and his work surrounding the cholera epidemic of the 1850's was during a microbiology class I took 5-6 years ago. John Snow is largely credited with the discovery of the causative nature of cholera and the resulting changes in civic sanitation and waste management. My appetite was only whetted then and wasn't fully satiated until after I read this intriguing account by Steven Johnson. More than just a telling of the events and resolution of the cholera epidemic of 1850's London, this book casts light on the political and social context of the times that made Mr. Snow's efforts even more noteworthy. Today we take for granted the germ theory of disease, but in Victorian London during the cholera outbreak of the 1850's the prevailing belief was that disease was caused by unhealthy air. Mr. Johnson's account of the obstacles faced by Mr. Snow in proving the true nature of the cholera's transmission is fascinating. This is a very good read for those interested in science and history.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
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.
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