The Ghost Map

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The Ghost Map

By Steven Johnson

The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 follows in the footsteps of outbreaks and pandemics that have come before.  How will it change our world when all is said and done?  This book looks back to a London epidemic and how it changed the modern world.

FOREWORD…

This book is an attempt to tell the story of that collision in a way that does justice to the multiple scales of existence that helped bring it about: from the invisible kingdom of microscopic bacteria, to the tragedy and courage and camaraderie of individual lives, to the cultural realm of ideas and ideologies, all the way up to the sprawling metropolis of London itself. It is the story of a map that lies at the intersection of all those different vectors, a map created to help make sense of an experience that defied human understanding. It is also a case study in how change happens in human society, the turbulent way in which wrong or ineffectual ideas are overthrown by better ones. More than anything else, though, it is an argument for seeing that terrible week as one of the defining moments in the invention of modern life.

Steven Johnson, author of How We Got to Now, takes the reader on a journey through a history that demonstrates how diseases can and have changed the world. Search for it at your local library or buy it on Amazon.