• The Ghost Map

  • By: Steven Johnson
  • Narrated by: Alan Sklar
  • Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (1,361 ratings)

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The Ghost Map  By  cover art

The Ghost Map

By: Steven Johnson
Narrated by: Alan Sklar
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Publisher's summary

This is a thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world.

The Ghost Map takes place in the summer of 1854. A devastating cholera outbreak seizes London just as it is emerging as a modern city: more than two million people packed into a 10-mile circumference, a hub of travel and commerce, teeming with people from all over the world, continually pushing the limits of infrastructure that's outdated as soon as it's updated. Dr. John Snow, whose ideas about contagion had been dismissed by the scientific community, is spurred to intense action when the people in his neighborhood begin dying. With enthralling suspense, Johnson chronicles Snow's day-by-day efforts as he risks his own life to prove how the epidemic is being spread.

From the dynamic thinker routinely compared to Malcolm Gladwell, E.O. Wilson, and James Gleick, The Ghost Map is a riveting story with a real-life historical hero. It brilliantly illuminates the intertwined histories of the spread of viruses, the rise of cities, and the nature of scientific inquiry. These are topics that have long obsessed Johnson, and The Ghost Map is a true triumph of the kind of multidisciplinary thinking for which he's become famous. This is a book that, like the work of Jared Diamond, presents both vivid history and a powerful and provocative explanation of what it means for the world we live in.

©2006 Steven Johnson (P)2006 Tantor Media Inc.

Critic reviews

"An illuminating and satisfying read." (Publishers Weekly)
"A formidable gathering of small facts and big ideas." (New York Times Book Review)

What listeners say about The Ghost Map

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

I’m an epidemiologist and I learned something new.

I completely recommend this book to those who don’t know John Snow and to those who thought they did.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

The most vivid description of Cholera you’ll get

This book is not for the queasy. If you want an extremely detailed look at the cholera pandemic, look no further. This was interesting and a quick listen, but it lacked the narrative storytelling I prefer in non fiction. Best line from the book, “What are we going to do with all this shit?”

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

This is a thinker’s kind of book

The writer puts you mentally in 19th century London with all of its awful human conditions. Then brings you through a step by step terrifying health crisis and opens the readers eyes as to how it could happen again with much higher human costs.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Well written

Not just informative but entertaining.
Learning isn’t just historical but applies to current world.
I plan to read more from this author now.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Excellently well done! Beautiful performance!!

Thank you so much for your performance, and for bringing this book to those who may not easily be able to read or have access to braille versions of this book. it was a thrilling listen, and an incredible tale.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

An ok read

I had to read this for my Advanced English class and I’m not going to lie it was pretty boring. You have to be looking for a book that has facts and serves as a account for history in order to enjoy this fully.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Fascinating and a well told tale

To me, this is "history" at its best. It succeeds on many levels. First, it's an interesting mystery that is eventually solved by the unlikeliest of people. It also exposes human understanding *and* inability to accept new scientific data that falls outside of current understanding. And it's a story of events that contributed very valuable things to public health (which used to be a low-interest topic until the COVID-19 pandemic took over our lives). Well written! Also, while the subject matter is grim, the author brings you into the day to day lives of the poor souls who lived through it, and ultimately the result of the cholera pandemic (i.e., the "Ghost Map") is much better public health policies that all modern people enjoy today. Fascinating.

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    5 out of 5 stars

Incredibly fascinating and eerily foretelling of 2020

This book was incredibly fascinating!! It was very well researched. While very detailed, historical, and topic specific, it was written in a way that has any reader completely interested and absorbed.
It was eerily foretelling of 2020. It was published in 2006, 14 years before the Covid pandemic yet so insightful and pertinent to what we’ve experienced. Even though transmission method is different for cholera vs Covid, the book helps us understand what solutions are determined and how they are possible.
Loved John Snow’s part to play. A huge shoutout to all my anesthesiologist friends. I’ve always believed they are the smartest of the medical professionals. But this book clearly shows the need for people from all walks of life when it comes to conquering disease and public crises. So grateful for public health servants and epidemiologists..
I highly recommend this book.
Audible reader was terrific for the content!! Wonderful listen!

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    5 out of 5 stars

My favorite Steven Johnson book

When I first saw this book in a store window, I assumed it was a suspense novel. I'd obviously not yet heard of Steven Johnson, and didn't give the book a second glance for a long time. Fast forward a couple years, and this has become one of my favorite books to recommend to people who haven't yet realized how fascinating history can be.

This book outlines the story of John Snow and how he shut down a cholera outbreak, proving how it spreads and how it can be stopped, thereby pioneering our modern epidemiologic science. I'd never heard of the "father of epidemiology" but enjoyed this story immensely. I know it might not all sound thrilling, but Johnson has a way of drawing you in. Definitely worth a listen!

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Meh. If you like Jared Diamond, this is for you

This book is fine — it’s fine. And if you’re interested in medical / microbial history, then you’ll probably dig it, in a “merely adequate” kinda vein.

But I found it dull and overlong. (And I’m someone who has listened to, say, Hannah Arendt, and Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” on audiobook — so I don’t demand a pulse-pounding narrative to stay tuned in.)

What made this book merely meh and increasingly tedious is the author’s overt effort to emulate books such as Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” covering 1001 topics under one meandering aegis.

It’s a formula of “expansive thoroughness” that hopes to simulate “profundity,” but in reality, it merely goes from exhaustive to exhausting.

The innumerable tangents and byways aren’t earned; they’re just sort of pointed out, one after another after another. Thorough, yet shallow.

When Robert Caro or Michel Foucault take you on such a sprawling tour, *then* it’s profound. Here — well, it’s fine.

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