The Ghost Map - Steven Johnson - 5 stars

[Nikki]

This book is not for the squeamish – a story about a cholera outbreak is naturally going to include some disgusting material, such as an explanation of how the rapid growth of cities in the 19th century led to conditions where “ingesting small particles of human waste went from being an anomaly to a staple of everyday life.” As well as being utterly repulsive, this illustrates what this book does best, combining observations at different scales and integrating insights from different disciplines. This is the same kind of thinking required by the story’s hero, scientist John Snow:

“To build a case for waterborne cholera, the mind had to travel across scales of human experience, from the impossibly small—the invisible kingdom of microbes—to the anatomy of the digestive tract, to the routine daily patterns of drinking wells or paying the water-company bills, all the way up to the grand cycles of life and death recorded in the Weekly Returns.”

This book manages to combine historical details about life in Victorian London, scientific explanations of the behaviour of the bacterium that causes cholera, and reflections on urban infrastructure and the future of megacities, tied together through a focus on a pair of engaging characters involved in a suspenseful plot. I was particularly impressed that despite the inclusion of lots of ‘ta-da!’ moments, the author consciously resists the impulse to tie the Broad Street pump story up too neatly, focusing instead on the equally interesting psychological riddle of why the ‘miasma’ explanation of cholera’s spread was so hard to shake off. I was weirdly excited by how much I admired this book, which seems to exist almost implausibly at the intersection of several interests of mine, and exemplifies the type of writing I’d love to be able to produce.

[Joanne]

Glad to see your review! I have this on my TBR and look forward to reading it

[Jgrace]

Joanne wrote: "Glad to see your review! I have this on my TBR and look forward to reading it"

Ditto! Thanks for this review.