New Book on History of Cholera and Public Health

Riverhead Hardcover recently released Steven Berlin Johnson's book entitled The Ghost Map.

Here is an excerpt from a L.A Times book review:

"The Ghost Map" charts the London cholera epidemic of 1854, from which Johnson extracts a saga of human ingenuity and true communal effort. Tellingly, no single savior or miracle worker emerges from the ordure. He shows how "the connectors and entrepreneurs and public characters who make the urban engine work at street level" saved the city from itself. Indeed, the seeming chaos and deep interconnectedness of urban life, the very conditions that create an epidemic, can also contribute to its cessation or cure, he writes.

Publishers' Weekly reviews it favorably here, as does the Seattle Times and Science, among others.

If you have comments on the book, you can give them directly to the author at his weblog. 

Sounds fascinating, and as someone generally interested in the history of public health, this is a must-read for me.

(H/T to Leigh Hopper at MedBlog).