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

I review the chapters one by one as I read them to explain the quality of the book overall.

Monday, August 28 : the night-soil men --

This is one disgusting chapter. It's not that visual but the idea of a city being this dirty and disgusting is repulsive. Makes you wonder how people even got to grow old in those conditions or why city living was so desired. But the info in this chapter is good even though the writing at times is a bit too posh making some parts harder to read than they should be. Though that also ads a layer of quality to the book. It detracts more than it ads in the long run. The best writing advice Stephen King gave the world was to keep things simple.

Saturday, September 2 : eyes sunk, lips dark blue --

This one has a very gory scene in it. I hate that part and will avoid other stuff from this writer as I hate gore.

The bacteria intro was a bit long. I think we all know what bacteria is so his long repetitive explanation took me out of the story but I get why it had to be there and much of it was very educational even for me.

Then the author has 1 major mistake that's by far his biggest error. He is biased in how he tells the story. According to his own logic, a logic he never explains or gives examples on, people in London back then were largely backwards biggots and that's what caused much of the sickness. He also refers to our modern time and alludes to the similar effect taking place here where some people in poor countries still suffer because people in richer countries are unwilling to help - at least it's a loose argument from him. Since he never tries to explain this point in any way there is no chance he can convince anyone. At the end it just reads like personal emotional viewpoints because that's exactly what it is. And it's dismissive and biggited too in some ways. Luckily he doesn't do it too much but it's still something that would make any reader doubt his neutrality. There is clearly a greater personal point of view he wants to tell people about here. I do feel like he is the hero of his own story.

Sunday, September 3 : the investigator --

An intro to the science and the person. The person intro is bare and a bit vague. We don't even know if Snow had kids or was dating. I just assume no. But the science of the time is incredible to look into.

Monday, September 4 : that is to say, Jo has not yet died --

This is a grander look at city life back then. A life in many cases surrounded by horror. The author unfortunately goes the spiritual holistic road when talking about why people moved to the cities. He compares people to bacteria somehow mysteriously moving about and seeking big companies. In reality the explanation is often not as obscure. People moved to cities for jobs as farming could be done with fewer people and city life offered greater wealth. Then there is the inner pull to big cities, but it's not spiritual. Evolutionary psychology explains much of this. He seems to want to be spiritual or just doesn't know about all the theories in psychology explaining social instincts.

Then we dive into the investigation again and yet again it really gets going here! The investigation is 10/10 even though I of course already know about the case and the old London city from documentaries. Other parts are hit and miss. I do feel like a book about the investigation only would be much more thrilling overall as the author has a tendency to spice up the science passages with glamorous but not always simple analogies like how he always compares the past to the present or cities to bacteria. When the book gets going you can't put it down. Unfortunately that's only 30% of it so far.

Tuesday, September 5 : all smell is disease --

Finally the book picks up pace and gets going. It's best when the author doesn't guess on how people were biggots. Here the investigation gets going and I can't put the book down. The author still has some long blame passages and other long expositions but those are not too bad here.

Wednesday, September 6 : building the case --

Best chapter so far by far. We now go into the investigation, the response and the city's own investigation that is of course a terrible one and will find nothing. This is true drama. Great stuff.

Friday, September 8 : the pump handle --

I just kept reading this chapter without putting the book down. Finally the flow of the story is great and not hampered by the author butting in. It's refreshing and feels fair and neutral compared to other chapters.

Conclusion : the ghost map --

Now the main story is completed and we get into the maps. Unfortunately the author didn't opt to include any of those old maps that are not under copyright. So all throughout the book you just have to visualize the maps even though he mentions that a popular textbook from 1911 reproduced some of them. It's curious that we were able to do things in 1911 that we are unable to do today because of printing costs, inflexible layouts in books and file sizes. Having the book contain the maps would easily make it nearly 1 star better. I think pretty much any reader would agree with that. The maps would make the text unforgettable. At least a link to them or a QR code would be nice. In the documentary about this I saw plenty of the maps and I felt like I was exploring things with the lead character.

Furthermore, it's nice that the author acknowledges the great work of the priest. He is a helper in the city working as a sort of psychologist as priests tend to do. And he works on the side of science against the state bureaucracy. Always nice when a modern author doesn't just bash religion any chance he gets even though there is enough history to bash.

Unfortunately this chapter yet again reveals some bias and worldviews influencing the story. This for me subtracts a star from the book overall. I don't mind opinions but just random opinions from a layman based on a bias are a waste of my time. I know enough about this stuff to know when someone is not being objective.

Epilogue : Broad Street revisited.

The epilogue is finally when the author lets go and goes even more into the personal opinion territory. It's much better this way because it's more transparent. But for uncritical readers it may seem like he just now became biased. Personally I think that personal opinions need to have this directness about them as they need to be clearly marked as biased worldviews.

What irritates me is that he uses a lot of number tricks to make his points seem more important. 100m people died of the Spanish flu according to him. World Trade Center had 50k workers so therefore planes crashing into them could cause a fatality number similar to the Vietnam War. You can look into these numbers yourself and decide why I find them iffy. Not that the real numbers are not big but this reveals his bias directly. He also talks about nuclear bombs and terrorist attacks making city living less popular as if it's a given or very likely. Ignoring the fact that zero atomic bombs has been dropped on cities since 1945. And also overlooking the very low death rates of terrorist attacks in Western nations. Not sure why the fear mongoring is needed. But at least he now says that cities are very clean and consume much less energy per person. So he does support cities! He even says we will ruin the Earth's environment if we don't move to cities. Finally the assumption and conclusion follow each other.

He also mentions that New York could experience a 500k deaths terrorist attack. Not sure how that would happen. But yeah, his numbers illustrate how he picks evidence or claims in this book.

My conclusion:

3,5 stars

It's great when it sticks to facts and doesn't repeat itself. It does that about 75% of the time. It's amazing when it tells the main story. It does that 50% of the time.

There are a few things that may make you not read the book. The gore passage, the disgusting passages and the repetitive nature of it. Those 3 things may make it a book you don't even want to pick up as the documentary, in my opinion, is better overall. If he didn't repeat himself this book would be 30-40 pages shorter.

The other errors don't break it but are still noticeable: biased assumptions heavily implying things, misperceptions about past life, too little understanding of psychology. Those errors are more expected as I don't expect anyone to know everything about history or psychology. But of course this lack of knowledge would not reveal itself if the author didn't have the need to butt in with personal opinions.

How I read the book and story makes an alternative theory very possible if not more likely. The public Board of Health didn't just see poor people as lesser beings who needed fixing. It's that the foul smell spreading disease theory made it easier to convince people that the public areas in the city needed more investment. In my mind the most impressive engineering project ever, London sewers, was done after London experienced their biggest nasty smell attack causing even the parliament to great issues. He does explain this in the book. But he seems unable to get to any deep conclusions on the issue.

It's just easier to spend people's tax money if you can easily explain why it's needed. The same thing happens today. When public schools and teacher unions want more money they create theories about how their teachers would educate better if they were just paid more. It's a mysterious force that fixes things if you spend money on it. I think the author is very narrow-minded in his view on things as he doesn't even consider any alternative theory like this one. But the history in the book is great.

I very strongly suggest you watch the John Snow documentary, the London sewer being built documentary and then the documentary about the pollution of old London. Those are incredible information bombs as they contain images and maps that will tell more in less time. But the book is very good too. I just don't consider it upper tier as it has too many weird conclusions.

he American Journalist Steven Johnson wrote The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic-And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World about how a map by the English physician John Snow helped convince people that cholera was caused by waste-polluted water instead of by polluted air. Johnson uses John Snow’s map to build a picture of the cholera outbreak in London, England, in the summer of 1854. Johnson only arrives at John Snow’s map in the conclusion (Johnson 231-256). The way the book is structured, the reader does not mind. The book uses John Snow’s map and the cholera outbreak in London in 1854 to explore many different topics. The epilogue explores the future of urbanism as of 2006. The book has an afterword which explores how the COVID epidemic affects Johnson’s philosophy of urbanism (Johnson 257-262). A large portion of the book explores the downfall of the theory of miasmatic air, an idea that disease was spread by polluted air, instead of by germs. The book traces how miasmatic air affected early public health initiatives in London in the mid-19th century with deadly consequences. The book has illustrations. The book has an appendix, which is entitled “Notes on Further Reading” (Johnson 266-268). The book has an index, a bibliography, and a section of notes. In the book, The Ghost Map, Johnson shows life in Victorian London and the dangers of not believing in scientific research when it comes to understanding the spread of disease.

This was an incredibly interesting read. So much in here about mapping, cholera, the shifting views from the theory of miasma to germ theory, the importance of waste management, the creation of complex sewer systems, the evolution of urbanization, etc. The last chapter went off the deep end a bit, but I thoroughly enjoyed most of the book. It reinforced how essential it is to follow the science instead of the superstition and to look at problems from many different angles with local knowledge.

Was pretty much 7 stars until the epilogue. The historical story is cool but I felt that Johnson wasn't as clear as he could have been delineating the possible causes and considering all aspects of those theories that ultimately proved false. Then came the epilogue where I feel Johnson gets a little evangelical on city living.

Great look at the epidemiological case for cholera.