The Ghost Map Summary

1097 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Origins of public health policy

1. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Steve Johnson has a Bachelor's degree in Semiotics from Brown University and a Master's in English Literature from Columbia. According to his website, Johnson is best known as the author of four best-selling books concerning the intersection of science, technology, and personal experience. He serves as contributing editor for Wired Magazine, a monthly columnist for Discover Magazine, and writer in residence at the NYU Department of Journalism. His lectures for both corporate and education institutions focus mostly on technological, scientific, and cultural issues. His past works have been published in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. With all of these accomplishments, Newsweek named him one of the "Fifty People Who Matter Most on the Internet." 2. THE SUMMARY: The Ghost Map covers a cholera outbreak in London in the year 1854. In 1854, London had a population of about two million and growing. London lacked the necessary tools to support its city. Garbage was never removed, the water was filthy, and the sewage …show more content…

The opening chapter discusses human waste in great detail. Each chapter shows the author conversing on a different conversation or topic. The chapters are not placed sequentially. The first few chapters introduce a different important component into the storyline, provide background material from different sources and describe a day's events early in the outbreak. Johnson will start discussing waste, cholera, or miasma, and then make his way back to the two men who changed history: Snow and Whitehead. Johnson says on his website that he wanted each chapter to chronologically depict the days of the epidemic, but also have it connect to one of the books major themes. This allows the chapters of the book to also serve as a standalone essay. Johnson says he is proud that no reviews of his book have mentioned this structure, and no reader has asked him about

Show More
Related

  • This Is The End Of The World Barbara Tuchman Summary

    169 Words  | 1 Pages

    In her article, “‘This Is the End of the World’:The Black Death,” which was on the New York Times best-seller list in 1978, writer and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Tuchman reports about the devastating impact of the Black Death in Europe from 1347 to 1350. [Summary] Tuchman starts her article describing the arrival of the deadly plague in October 1347 brought by Genoese trading ships docked at the Sicilian port of Messina and its effects it has on Europe’s population (257-263). [Paraphrase] Tuchman describes about the terrible epidemic that is speculated to have emerged from China and how it is continuously spreading throughout Europe killing countless number of people (258). Tuchman names out a long list of European cities and how

    Read More

  • Summary Of In The Realm Of Hungry Ghost

    1473 Words  | 3 Pages

    The book “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction” was published in the year 2008 on the 12th of February by Knopf Canada. The author of this book is Dr. Gabor Mate who has worked for twelve years in the eastside Vancouver with patients suffering from addiction, mental illness and HIV. He is also a renowned speaker and a bestselling author. He also received the Hubert Evans Prize for Literary Non-Fiction and the 2012 Martin Luther King Humanitarian Award for his work. (….)

    Read More

  • The Ghost of Cloudcroft New Mexico

    1663 Words  | 4 Pages

    Cloudcroft, New Mexico, meaning a "clearing in the clouds", is a small mountain town located to the east of Alamogordo, NM ("Cloudcroft"). The town's history is intimately tied to the building of the Alamogordo and Sacramento Mountain Railway that allowed the town to be permanently settled in the late 1800s, and to the logging business that made the town and railroad successful for half a century ("Investigation… Lodge"). As with many frontier towns, Cloudcroft has a number of legends that document the unique and violent events in its history, and also a fair number of ghosts that haunt its historic sites.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of The Ghost Map

    1275 Words  | 3 Pages

    The book, The Ghost Map, tells the story of the cholera outbreak that took place in England during the medieval era. During this time, London became popular, causing it to become one of the most populous urban cities in England. However, it suffered from overcrowding, a large lower class, and little health regulations. As a result, living conditions and water supply were not the cleanest, and many died from the disease cholera. Though this epidemic led to many deaths/illnesses during it’s time, it has proven to be helpful and important to public health today. Some public health advancements that have occurred as a result include healthier, cleaner, and longer lives lived.

    Read More

  • 14th Century Outbreak of the Black Plague

    1151 Words  | 3 Pages

    Before the Black Plague, living in Britain was interesting and positive but, was not always pleasant. It was too crowded and dirty, Britain was disgusting and unsanitary for the citizens for a long period of time, even before the disease spread to Europe (Ibeji n.pag.). Thus, Britain being so dirty, it was easier for this disease to spread. The citizens of Europe had no clue what was coming to disease them. Many people were not ready for the cultural changes of the disease and were shocked the disease even reached their towns.

    Read More

  • Oswald's Ghost Analysis

    723 Words  | 2 Pages

    There are innumerable conspiracies regarding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but according to the film “Oswald’s Ghost”, after forty years none of the theories have panned out. Certainly, it is human nature to find solutions, to solve the mystery, and to have the answer pan out. That is why countless people have tried to solve the mystery by delving into the past of Lee Harvey Oswald to find out if he was the perfect assassin or if he the perfect patsy.

    Read More

  • Medicine in the Renaissance

    412 Words  | 1 Pages

    The filth of the cities promoted the spread of disease faster than doctors could discover a cure. This encouraged large outbreaks of many deadly diseases. And it is said that throughout this period there were people who went about the cities and towns with wagons calling "Bring out your dead!" in a fashion similar to that of the Medieval era during the bubonic plague (Which, by the way, was not yet a dead disease).

    Read More

  • The Cholera Outbreak In Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map

    996 Words  | 2 Pages

    Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map, depicts the Cholera outbreak in London in 1854, the largest city that has been built in the world. The book shows a path towards a scientific solution. This book focuses on a doctor, John Snow, and his search for a way to stop the epidemic that was occurring. Even though Dr. Snow had discovered some theories on his own, he also had the help of a Reverend, Henry Whitehead. They are searching for a new theory on how disease spreads, but their community did not want to accept their findings. Johnson’s central argument is that in order to treat a disease, one must understand how the disease functions. While the science community did not believe Dr. Snow’s findings at the time, Johnson’s obsession with how people

    Read More

  • Tale of the Haunted GPS Navigation System

    1641 Words  | 4 Pages

    The storyteller, who happens to be my cousin, currently works as a math teacher. He is 24 years old and lives at home with his mother and father. His mother, a talented artist, works for the United States Postal Service and his father, who is an electrician, installs security systems for homes and offices. Both of his parents are Korean and although his older brother was born in Korea, he was born in the United States. He is very athletic and enjoys skateboarding and snowboarding. When he was younger he was always the one most willing to take risks in the family. He is also a talented guitarist. He also has deep religious convictions as a devout Christian, when asked what he thinks of ghost stories in general he merely shrugged them off as stories meant for entertainment rather than anything of merit. When asked about the origins of the particular story he said that a friend mentioned it at a party several years ago.

    Read More

  • The Black Death: Bubonic Plague’s Worst Disaster

    1759 Words  | 4 Pages

    Kira L. S. Newman, “Shutt Up: Bubonic Plague and Quarantine in Early Modern England,” Journal of Social History, 3, (2012): 809-834

    Read More

  • The Ghost Map Analysis

    1258 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Ghost Map was a historical piece of literature that was used to explain the V. cholera epidemic in London. The book, written by Steven Johnson, tells about how the water and the lack of proper sewage systems lead to a disease that killed many citizens and lead to panic for Londoners. Dr. John Snow, an anesthesiologist, began to research what played a role in the deaths and how it could be cured and stopped. He discovered that the disease was a waterborne disease after a series of interviews with London people in specific regions of London who managed to survive the plague. Mr. Snow learned that the survivor where drinking water from specific wells before they got sick so he went and gathered water samples, “Cholera wasn’t

    Read More

  • Sanitation and Plagues of Elizabeth?s England

    781 Words  | 2 Pages

    Also known as, “"The Black Death", because of the black spots it produced on the skin. A terrible killer was loose across Europe, and medieval medicine had nothing to combat it”(Rice). London was afflicted over a dozen times during the 1500’s (Miller and Orr)”. Winters were usually mild, allowing the rats and rodents, which carried fleas to stay active throughout the winter months. “Typhus fever is another disease born of bad sanitation.

    Read More

  • The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

    1031 Words  | 3 Pages

    Pamela K. Gilbert, “’Scarcely to be Described’: Urban Extremes as Real Spaces and Mythic Places in the London Cholera Epidemic of 1854,” Nineteenth Century Studies 14 (2000): 149-72.

    Read More

  • Sardonic Lines

    925 Words  | 2 Pages

    Constantinople: The door was chalked with a heap of chalk; around the house stretched a thin white line, indicating that the house contained plague. This is an unpleasant image, on which I will not dwell. A strange, contemporary thought: almost every property in London has had Death in it; very few houses can be said to be clean of Death. A City of bodies...

    Read More

  • Edwidge Danticat Ghost Summary

    1041 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the fiction story “Ghosts” by Edwidge Danticat it sets place in Haiti, the story talks about Pascal and his family living in the area called Bel-Air, which he describes himself as “a mid-level slum”. They move to the nice place “Bel Air” because they wanted their kids to finish primary school. Living in this mid level slum, Pascal says that it’s not overrun by gangs. In that area though has one active major gang. His family run a restaurant in the area, but that has also become central to the gang’s activities.

    Read More

More about The Ghost Map Summary

Open Document