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Book: The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
Quotes of Book: The Ghost Map: The Story of
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  1. Steven Johnson _ The Ghost Map: The Story of

    as the historian Tom Standage observes, they were "among the first to recognize the importance of trademarks and advertising, of slogans, logos…. Since the remedies themselves usually cost very little to make, it made sense to spend money on marketing.
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  2. Steven Johnson _ The Ghost Map: The Story of

    Early risers strolling along the Thames would see the toshers wading through the muck of low tide, dressed almost comically in flowing velveteen coats, their oversized pockets filled with stray bits of copper recovered from the water's edge. The toshers walked with a lantern strapped to their chest to help them see in the predawn gloom, and carried an eight-foot-long pole that they used to test the ground in front of them, and to pull themselves out when they stumbled into a quagmire. The pole and the eerie glow of the lantern through the robes gave them the look of ragged wizards, scouring the foul river's edge for magic coins.
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  3. Steven Johnson _ The Ghost Map: The Story of

    The contamination of drinking water in dense urban settlements did not merely affect the number of V. cholerae circulating through the small intestines of mankind. It also greatly increased the lethality of the bacteria. This is an evolutionary principle that has long been observed in populations of disease-spreading microbes. Bacteria and viruses evolve at much faster rates than humans do, for several reasons. For one, bacterial life cycles are incredibly fast: a single bacterium can produce a million offspring in a matter of hours. Each new generation opens up new possibilities for genetic innovation, either by new combinations of existing genes or by random mutations. Human genetic change is several orders of magnitude slower; we have to go through a whole fifteen-year process of maturation before we can even think about passing our genes to a new generation.
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  4. Steven Johnson _ The Ghost Map: The Story of

    This is not mere sentimentality. The triumph of twentieth-century metropolitan life is, in a real sense, the triumph of one image over the other: the dark ritual of deadly epidemics replaced by the convivial exchanges of strangers from different backgrounds sharing ideas on the sidewalk.
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  5. Steven Johnson _ The Ghost Map: The Story of

    And of course, if they do recognize that they are living through a historical crisis, it's often too late-because, like it or not, the primary way that ordinary people create this distinct genre of history is by dying.
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  6. Steven Johnson _ The Ghost Map: The Story of

    Cities were suddenly populated by a class of consumers, free to worry about other pressing matters: new technologies, new modes of commerce, politics, professional sports, celebrity gossip. That
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  7. Steven Johnson _ The Ghost Map: The Story of

    And so this is why the whole world has suddenly taken an interest in whether Thai poultry workers get their flu shots: because the world wants to ensure that H5N1 stays as far away as possible from ordinary flu viruses.
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  8. Steven Johnson _ The Ghost Map: The Story of

    In other words, a serious crisis of nonrenewable energy resources is likely to accelerate the urbanization trend, not derail it.
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  9. Steven Johnson _ The Ghost Map: The Story of

    The wealthiest cities of the world will follow Venice's lead and simply try to engineer their way around the problem. The poorest cities will follow New Orleans' lead-at least so far-and just move to other nearby cities. Either way the poplation stays urban.
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  10. Steven Johnson _ The Ghost Map: The Story of

    There's a reason why the world's wealthiest people-people with near-infinite options vis-à-vis the choice of where to make their home-consistently choose to live in the densest areas on the planet. Ultimately, they live in these spaces for the same reason that the squatter classes of São Paulo do: because cities are where the action is. Cities are centers of opportunity, tolerance, wealth creation, social networking, health, population control, and creativity.
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  11. Steven Johnson _ The Ghost Map: The Story of

    Dense urban environments may do away with nature altogether-there are many vibrantly healthy neighborhoods in Paris or Manhattan that lack even a single tree-but they also perform the crucial service of reducing mankind's environmental footprint. Compare the sewage system of a midsized city like Portland, Oregon, with the kind of waste management resources that would be required to support the same population dispersed across the countryside. Portland's 500,000 inhabitants require two sewage treatment plants, connected by 2,000 miles of pipes. A rural population would require more than 100,000 septic tanks, and 7,000 miles of pipe. The rural waste system would be several times more expensive than the urban version.
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  12. Steven Johnson _ The Ghost Map: The Story of

    In the long run, the map was a triumph of marketing as much as empirical science. It helped a good idea find a wide audience.
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