Book Description
Characters
Dr. John Snow is the main focus of this book. He is central character around which the other ideas and people revolve. In the book, he is spurned by the scientific community for some of his radical ideas about disease transmission. When there is a cholera outbreak, he sets up an experiment to demonstrate his theories.
Setting
The book is set in London, England in 1854. Unlike many non-fiction books, it actually takes place over only a few days. It traces Dr. Snow’s movements and the state of London through the cholera outbreak, one day at a time.
Plot
There is a cholera outbreak in London in the summer of 1854. The author walks through each day of the outbreak and the experiments that Dr. Snow created to demonstrate disease transmission. However, the book’s small scale time period is set in a larger context of medical science and city planning.
See description and other reviews on GoodReads.
An Editor’s Book Review
Character Development
Dr. Snow has a very clear challenge and mission in the book. Readers can empathize with his rejection by the science community over his new and odd (for the time) theories. His determination to demonstrate that his theories are sound is also easy to connect with. Since the book happens over such a short period of time, it is pretty intensely focused on his work, and readers do have enough time to get to know and understand him as a person.
Pacing
You wouldn’t expect a book on disease transmission in 1850’s London to have a fast pace. However, I think the short timeline (only days) keeps the pace moving briskly. The reader is curious to understand how the cholera outbreak is progressing. There is a sense of urgency because the reader hopes that Dr. Snow can use his experimental data to minimize the damage.
Writing Style
My favorite thing about Steven Johnson’s writing style is his ability to take a small event (cholera outbreak in 1854 London) and set it in a larger context of innovation. Most other authors do this through multiple examples, which is effective, but it makes it harder for the reader to connect to each event (because space is limited for each).
That said, some readers may find his style a pretentious. It is written in a more scholarly manner than many of the popular science books out there (like Mary Roach or Sam Kean’s books). I’ve included a quote below as an example:
By the last decades of the nineteenth century, the germ theory of disease was everywhere ascendant, and the miasmatists had been replaced by a new generation of microbe hunters charting the invisible realm of bacterial and viral life.
The Ghost Map, Steven Johnson (p. 213)
The quote also shows what I like about his writing style, lots of metaphors and descriptive verbs that help bring the ideas to life. Steven Johnson is one of my favorite science and innovation writers, but his books do require a bit of patience and a lot of curiosity in order to enjoy them.
Related Recommendations
If you enjoyed The Ghost Map, I recommend The Invention of Air, also by Steven Johnson. It is another story of innovation, focusing on a singular individual but set within a larger context.