The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

by Steven Johnson

As Stephen Jay Gould argued in his book Full House, it makes for good museum copy to talk about an Age of Dinosaurs or an Age of Man, but in reality it’s been one long Age of Bacteria on this planet since the days of the primordial soup. The rest of us are mere afterthoughts.