Ghost Map It was gripping as well as informative. My son is in medical school with an interest in research which made it even more interesting. I previously enjoyed reading the History of London, and found this to be a slice of English history I wanted to know a little more about. I was not disappointed.
A True Detective Story I learned about this book by listening to a National Public Radio interview with the author who provided enough details to entice me to purchase it. The true account of the 1854 cholera epidemic in London reads, for the most part, like a detective story in which you as the reader follow the paths of Dr. Snow as he investigates to find the source of the disease, that is, contaminated water, despite common belief it had another cause. I found his methods of research, as well as those of Minister Whitehead (a secondary figure in the drama), fascinating as he mapped the trail of deaths to one water pump in the Soho district. The book reads well although at times I thought the author was repetitive, going over the same information in several chapters. I suppose that was done to make sure a particular point was made, but it became a bit tiresome. Overall, The Ghost Map was very interesting and worth putting up with the occasional scientific jargon and redundant information.Flawed and annoying, but I still couldn't put it down. Like other reviewers here, I found this book fascinating AND at the same time extremely annoying.
Strengths of this book:
The description of the living conditions for the working poor in Victorian London -- If you have a romanticized view of the period, based on slick film adaptations of Dickens novels, you'll be stunned at the appalling filth and the tales of people who made a living wallowing in that filth. It's so disgusting that it's virtually Monty Python-esque. I loved it.
Cholera and sanitation -- the author tells a classic story of progress through science. The disease was long seen as a mysterious consequence of bad smells and miasmas, when in fact (as John Snow showed) it has a straightforward physical origin in foul drinking water. The author shows that, for the modern city to develop, it was simply a necessity to find a way to keep human excrement away from the water supply.
Perspective on threats to human health -- The fatality numbers associated with cholera epidemics are absolutely horrifying by today's (developed world) standards. Thousands of people were often killed in cities of a few million. Other than a Hurricane Katrina or 9/11, we have almost no conception of such a thing in America today. The author makes this sobering point very effectively.
Weaknesses of this book:
Too much speculation, based apparently on a lack of detailed knowledge of what actually happened. The author constantly speculates about what the main actors must have (might have?) discussed with each other, or what they probably thought or said about this or that, or whether they might have passed each other on the street, etc. This gets really annoying.
The end of the book is really silly. The author digresses into giving some trite and irrelevant thoughts on modern city life, the internet, Google, nuclear terrorism, etc. It's totally weird. I didn't pick up a book about cholera epidemics in Victorian London to read about the wonders of modern GPS mapping software.
It's repetitive. I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it when an author makes the same points over and over again. The Editor really dropped the ball here.
And of course the map, after which the book is named -- It does appear in the book, but only in modified (e.g. grayed out) versions in the cover art and the chapter dividers. The map is never actually reproduced in clear black and white, in its entirety. This is really weird. In fact, it's not mentioned until the latter part of the book, so it really isn't all that important to the story. Go figure.
