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"An account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London--and an exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease in cities. In the summer of 1854, a devastating cholera outbreak seized London just as it was emerging as a modern city: more than 2 million people packed into a ten-mile circumference, a hub of travel and commerce, continually pushing the limits of infrastructure that's outdated as soon as it's updated. Author Johnson chronicles Snow's day-by-day efforts as he risked his own life to prove how the epidemic was being spread. When he created the map that traced the pattern of outbreak back to its source, Dr. Snow didn't just solve a pressing medical riddle--he established a precedent for the way modern city-dwellers, city planners, physicians, and public officials think about the spread of disease and the development of the modern urban environment.--From publisher description."--Source other than the Library of Congress.… (mehr)
A very informative account of the London 1850s cholera outbreak. The author presents the facts well and rounds them of with well-placed literary examples from Dickens. There are good comparatives with evolutionary biology on how a society functions. All in all a very important book and definitely commendable. ( )
I have mixed feelings about this one. I enjoyed the first part of the book, for the most part, when he was just talking history. Toward the end, and after the original source of the disease was revealed, it took an eye-rolling turn. I wish I would have just stopped after the history and skipped the global warming, fear mongering, and treatise on cities = good; country = ignorant people who can't stop having kids. (Dear author, I live in Arkansas by choice and am from Oregon by birth. I have 9 children. I'm also really smart. Sorry I don't fit your narrative.)
The author is a preachy humanist/environmentalist/atheist annoying pain in the &%#%@# so it's hard to take some of his future solution ideas very seriously. Just give me the facts...let me figure out my own response to them.
Hillbilly Me did manage to math enough to figure out that this epidemic was far, far worse than the one we're supposedly currently experiencing. The COVID death rate for England and Wales at the time of my figurin' was .00002%, while the rate for cholera was .0003%. Both are pretty miniscule, but one death is enough to investigate the cause and make reasonable and intelligent changes.
Regardless of my over the top, too personal feelings of dislike for the author, I love books like this that are chockfull of history. While I don't believe in macro-evolution, micro-evolution has always fascinated me. I found his ideas about inconsistencies among various cultures regarding alcohol adaptation/resistance especially interesting. I also had to chuckle at so much of the ignorant thinking in those days and wondered if the board of health was so worried about the air, why were they sending people in to so intimately investigate? When I read about the ignorance of past science, it makes me wonder how many of our fantastic and innovative ideas will one day be viewed as ignorant? Ha! ( )
I like Johnson’s style. You get the whole story, but he’s got an underlying theme to give the whole thing form and meaning. An enjoyable read and you know a whole bunch about this interesting turning point in history by the end. ( )
This book was absolutely MADE of context, in a way that I found incredibly satisfying. At its most basic level, this is the story of cholera epidemic in London that led to the discovery (finally) of how cholera is transmitted.
But it is the how, yes? How this happened that is fascinating, and Johnson is all about placing this moment in its proper contexts -- from economics, sanitation, city planning, dominant scientific paradigms, communication, the medical profession...
Sometimes all these layers of context can cause some circling back that may cause impatience if you're just trying to get to the payoff, but for the most part, I was delighted. ( )
To nonfiction book writers: if you want your book to sell, make huge, dramatic claims with your title and/or subtitle. If you want your book to be a bestseller, you actually have to fulfill those claims. Steven Johnson has done both, again and again.
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"A Klee painting named 'Angelus Novus' shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistably propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress." —Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History"
Widmung
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For the women in my life:
My mother and sisters, for their amazing work on the front lines of public health
Alexa, for the gift of Henry Whitehead
and Mame, for introducing me to London so many years ago . . .
Erste Worte
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It is August 1854, and London is a city of scavengers.
Zitate
Letzte Worte
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The only question is whether we can steer around these crises without killing ten million people, or more. So let's get on with it.
"An account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London--and an exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease in cities. In the summer of 1854, a devastating cholera outbreak seized London just as it was emerging as a modern city: more than 2 million people packed into a ten-mile circumference, a hub of travel and commerce, continually pushing the limits of infrastructure that's outdated as soon as it's updated. Author Johnson chronicles Snow's day-by-day efforts as he risked his own life to prove how the epidemic was being spread. When he created the map that traced the pattern of outbreak back to its source, Dr. Snow didn't just solve a pressing medical riddle--he established a precedent for the way modern city-dwellers, city planners, physicians, and public officials think about the spread of disease and the development of the modern urban environment.--From publisher description."--Source other than the Library of Congress.
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The 2013 Science, Religion, and History group read discussion thread
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All in all a very important book and definitely commendable. (