In Review

04 December 2008 03:13 BST

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

Published by Penguin, out now, hardback, 299 pages, £16.99.

In a nutshell…

Mildly eyebrow-raising but ultimately uninspiring. Amateurish.

What's it all about?

In 1854 a cholera epidemic broke out in Soho that would rage for years, taking 50,000 lives in England and Wales. Nobody could explain how the disease came about nor could they do anything to prevent the victims' speedy deaths.

Along come Dr John Snow and Reverend Henry Whitehead, who – first separately then together – carried out painstaking research that flew in the face of contemporary science and eventually led to a complete revolution in sewage management.

Johnson looks at how the two men's work not only beat a deadly disease but also paved the way for the growth of future metropolises.

Who's it by?

Steven Johnson - an American journalist who specialises in technology, writing the monthly 'emerging technology' column for Discover magazine and is a contributing editor to Wired.

His journalism has appeared in many big titles across the US and UK and he has written four previous books, including Everything Bad Is Good For You.

As an example…

"And, indeed [filling the Thames with excrement] was a kind of madness, the madness that comes from being under the spell of a Theory."

"Snow's theory was like a ladder; each individual rung was impressive enough, but the power of it lay in ascending from the bottom to top, from the membrane of the small intestine all the way up to the city itself."

Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster

No chance.

What the others say

"[Overuse of 'irony'] seems to reflect Johnson's insistence that his insights, beyond being interesting and significant, are ingenious reversals of expectation… elegantly sufficient." – The New York Times

"Steven Johnson's thought-provoking shifts from megalopolis to micro-organism and back again make for an exhilarating read." – The Spectator

So is it any good?

A key factor of why this book is so disappointing is that the subject matter has the potential to be quite fruitful and it is obvious that Johnson's project had much promise at the outset.

He has all the facts at his fingertips, extensively quotes primary sources and his discussion of this crisis period for Victorian science is certainly a welcome reminder of the struggles faced in the 19th century.

Unfortunately, the problem came when the author put pen to paper. Johnson tries to be a storyteller, a scientist and a social anthropologist and, it must be said, he fails at all three.

His narration of the intertwining tales of Snow and Whitehead is undermined by explaining their findings within the first 50 pages thus quashing any sense of tension. But then, annoyingly, he tries to regain the suspense by closing paragraphs with Dan Brown-esque sentences, such as: "[City-dwellers thought] that the very idea of building cities on the scale of London was a mistake – one that was soon to be corrected."

Johnson's treatment of the science behind cholera is cursory at best– he seems far too obsessed with the idea that a tiny microbe can bring a massive city to its knees to go into any significant detail.

And finally, his attempt to conceptualise the epidemic's social and intellectual anthropology is so conventional that it becomes humdrum. He relentlessly champions Snow and Whitehead's theories while consistently thrashes at the idiocy of those who opposed them, those who believed cholera to be spread through the air.

Such a viewpoint is easy, writing 150 years after the event; it is like someone savouring in Chelsea's Premiership win, after the team had won its last match.

In the Ghost Map, Johnson takes on a fascinating topic but fails to do it justice. He is too ambitious in his scope and too polemical in his style to fulfil any of the three roles his narrative assumes.

4/10

Kevin Crowley