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

We found 24 Reddit comments about The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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

u/satanicpuppy · 502 pointsr/todayilearned

For a good book about this, check out The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson.

u/RAGING_VEGETARIAN · 20 pointsr/politics

That's how it used to be. London in the 19th century had a preposterously confusing network of water lines because of several competing companies who all delivered running water and all had their own separate lines tangling their way through the city. You couldn't tell by looking at a house or a neighborhood where their water came from; you had to individually ask homeowners who they payed their water bill to, and not everybody even knew. And one of the results of this overcomplexity was that it probably delayed the discovery of the fact that cholera is transmitted through water (source).

Imagine being the pediatrician who elucidated the Flint water crisis, but different: you notice an uptick in blood lead levels of your patients and suspect that one or more of the five competing water utilities must have become contaminated with lead. But you didn't know which one(s) it might be because you didn't know where any given house got their water and all of the utilities are denying you access to their error-riddled customer lists.

u/LordDinglebury · 19 pointsr/UrbanHell

Thanks, will definitely check that out!

Also responding here for /u/rock_lobsterrr since they asked for some recos as well.

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson is about a deadly cholera outbreak in Victorian London. The disease killed so many that it led to the creation of the Bazalgette sewer system that London still uses today.

New York: An Illustrated History by Ric Burns, Lisa Ades, and James Sanders is a beast of a coffee table book that outlines the comprehensive history of Manhattan from swampland backwater to thriving modern metropolis. It's chock full of some fantastic stories, including the one about two reclusive brothers who were found dead in a brownstone that was heavily booby-trapped. (One was invalid, and the other was killed by his own booby traps.) The whole book is a lovingly-created tapestry of New York's ambitious, brutal, and just plain weird history.

That's all I got for now, but if I remember something else, I'll add it to my comment.

u/Equipoisonous · 12 pointsr/publichealth

Highly recommend The Ghost Map

u/bushgoliath · 7 pointsr/medicalschool

I loved biomedical pop-sci with a passion when I was in high school. "Stiff" was on my bookshelf for sure. Didn't read Atul Gawande's stuff until later, but enjoyed them very much. My favorites from when I was a teen were:

u/BedsideRounds · 6 pointsr/medicine

If you haven't read it, The Ghost Map is an excellent book about the investigation into the Broad Street Well.

u/twofatfeet · 3 pointsr/booksuggestions
u/saitouamaya · 3 pointsr/theknick

You might enjoy Ghost Map. It is about the London cholera epidemic in 1854. https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Map-Londons-Terrifying-Epidemic/dp/1594482691

u/digplants · 2 pointsr/water

You have a cool list there. I enjoyed [The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594482691/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_PriQAbA38S824)

u/tpelly · 2 pointsr/booksuggestions

Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map -
The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Map-Londons-Terrifying-Epidemic/dp/1594482691/

u/EtTuTortilla · 2 pointsr/NoSleepOOC

The best historical plague novel I can think of is actually about the cholera outbreak in England a few hundred years ago (c. 1830). It's called The Ghost Map, written by Stephen Johnson, and details the first outbreak fought and visualized with modern mathematical methods. Being a total stats nerd, it's one of my favorite nonfiction books and really makes you wonder how many other mysteries could be solved with the right combination of graphing and analysis.

Anyway, the two real life protagonists are perfect for a comedy/action movie; a priest with a giant beard who habitually drank water with whiskey in it and a wacky scientist who discovered one of the first anesthetics and who huffed said anesthetic for fun.

u/Vio_ · 2 pointsr/podcasts

Do it. You don't need a history background to do this, and you've got a great background that will give you a lot of unique insights that most people like me won't have. You can do the infrastructure, the engineering, and the rest that often gets glossed over in a lot of these kinds of more social science podcasts. There's a book called The Ghost Map that really gets into your vibe:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Ghost-Map-Terrifying-Epidemic/dp/1594482691

It's an epidemiological case study of an epidemic in London in the 1840s, and it goes into the background/urban planning of what was going on back then.


Btw, what are your favorite podcasts?

u/homegrownunknown · 2 pointsr/chemistry

I love science books. These are all on my bookshelf/around my apt. They aren't all chemistry, but they appeal to my science senses:

I got a coffee table book once as a gift. It's Theodore Gray's The Elements. It's beautiful, but like I said, more of a coffee table book. It's got a ton of very cool info about each atom though.

I tried The Immortal Life of Henrieta Lacks, which is all about the people and family behind HeLa cells. That was a big hit, but I didn't care for it.

I liked The Emperor of all Maladies which took a long time to read, but was super cool. It's essentially a biography of cancer. (Actually I think that's it's subtitle)

The Wizard of Quarks and Alice in Quantumland are both super cute allegories relating to partical physics and quantum physics respectively. I liked them both, though they felt low-level, tying them to high-level physics resulted in a fun read.

Unscientific America I bought on a whim and didn't really enjoy since it wasn't science enough.

The Ghost Map was a suuuper fun read about Cholera. I love reading about mass-epidemics and plague.

The Bell that Rings Light, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, Schrödinger's Kittens, The Fabric of the Cosmos and Beyond the God Particle are all pleasure reading books that are really primers on Quantum.

I also tend to like anything by Mary Roach, which isn't necessarily chemistry or science, but is amusing and feels informative. I started with Stiff but she has a few others that I also enjoyed.

Have fun!

u/MontyHallsGoat · 2 pointsr/UKhistory

The Ghost Map - excellent book on this subject

u/[deleted] · 2 pointsr/epidemiology

The bayakou reminds me a lot of the nightmen and sanitation companies that Steven Johnson wrote about in The Ghost Map. The nightmen were young men would dive into sewers to scoop up rich deposits of feces for agricultural purposes. Sanitation companies were the ones digging giant holes for all the human waste, some of which would bubble back up and turn entire properties into fecal swamps that you'd have to traverse. Johnson also recounts stories of workmen drowning in those pits and the role they played in the cholera epidemic.

It's a really good book about John Snow and how he basically came up with epidemiology to fight cholera outbreaks.

u/gunslinger_006 · 2 pointsr/AdviceAnimals

The miasma theory, and its defenders during the Cholera outbreak in London (the one that lead to the first studies in epidemiology and urban planning/sewers) is covered in great detail in an amazing book called The Ghost Map.

Definitely give it a read if you are into epidemiology:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Ghost-Map-Terrifying-Epidemic--/dp/1594482691/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405001782&sr=8-1&keywords=the+ghost+map

u/losermedia · 1 pointr/Random_Acts_Of_Amazon

First, congrats! THat's amazing!!

Second, THe Ghost Map of London. I figure the chillyness of London, combined with the scaryness of the book will keep me cool in the Texas son. Also, I didn't do any ghost tours while I was in London and I'm kicking myself over it and would really like to try to relive it this way. :)

u/finalfunk · 1 pointr/AskEngineers

This one is sort of a biography (of John Snow), but more of a mystery/case study that he was central to solving. Certainly worth reading if you are planning to work with water supply at all: The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

http://www.amazon.com/The-Ghost-Map-Terrifying-Epidemic/dp/1594482691

u/dareads · 1 pointr/AskReddit

A Short History of Nearly Everything basically what the title says;

Where Men Win Glory about the Afganistan War and Pat Tillman, or really anything by Jon Krakauer (I loved his Everest book and the one on radical Mormon religion);

Newjack by Ted Conover, Conover became a corrections officer at Sing Sing prison and wrote about his experiences,

The Ghost Map about the start of epidemiology and how we started tracking viruses.

All of them are great reads where you also learn.

u/letwaterflow · 1 pointr/todayilearned

The story is told in The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1594482691/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_gRDOBb2CXD58R

u/CagedChimp · 1 pointr/biology

Rabid, The Demon in the Freezer, and The Ghost Map are all books I've found fascinating about various diseases.

I would second /u/Amprvector's suggestion of both The Emperor of all Maladies, and The Selfish Gene as well.

u/randomfemale · 1 pointr/books