The Ghost Map
The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
About the book
In the summer of 1854, cholera tore through London just as it was becoming a modern city, with more than 2 million people crowded into a ten-mile circumference and infrastructure that could not keep pace. Steven Johnson centers his account of the Broad Street outbreak in Soho on two men: physician John Snow, whose ideas about contagion the scientific community had dismissed, and the Reverend Henry Whitehead, whose knowledge of the neighborhood helped pin down the cause. Johnson follows Snow day by day as he risks his own life, maps the cases and traces them to the Broad Street pump. From there the book connects the spread of disease, the growth of cities and the workings of scientific inquiry.
BlastPoint co-founder and CEO Alison Alvarez said traces of John Snow's map show up in some of her company's customer discovery tools, because it pinpointed a solution to a problem that seemed impossible.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Alison Alvarez (Co-Founder & CEO/Blastpoint.io)
I read the Ghost Map, a book about 1854 London Cholera outbreak. The outbreak was stopped because of a map created by Dr. John Snow. You can see hints of this map in some of our customer discovery tools because it was such an effective way of pinpointing a solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem.
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