Steven Berlin Johnson has been justly celebrated for several of his books. I’ve read his blog and many of his articles in Salon and The New York Times, but The Ghost Map was the first book I’ve read. The subtitle is “The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World.” Johnson’s own sense of wonder in telling the story comes through. Biography of an idea, profile of an early scientist, chronicle of how ideas spread (as much as disease), and history of data visualization: this book wraps several narratives together, wonderfully.