Ghost Map Reviews: The First Round

So the review season has officially started for The Ghost Map, though it doesn't come out until this Thursday. I'll try to keep up with them here, though if they remain as positive as they've been thus far, I'll go out of my way to find the negative bits, I promise. Otherwise it might seem a little insufferable.

We're the lead review -- titled "Plotting Death" -- in this Sunday's L.A. Times books section. It's always a little startling to have your prose described as "nauseating" in the first paragraph of a review, but in this case, it appears to be a compliment. I particularly loved this ending bit, where there's a very nice connection back to Emergence:

In his previous book, "Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software," Johnson brilliantly posited ideas about the organization of systems from the bottom up. In "The Ghost Map," he reveals just how those principles actually work in a messy, constantly decomposing real world. With this, his fifth nonfiction book, Johnson adds a new and welcome element — old-fashioned storytelling flair, another form of street knowledge — to his fractal, multi-faceted method of unraveling the scientific mysteries of everyday life.

Then there's Abe at Abstract Dynamics, who has a very flattering take on the book, and also an extremely interesting one in terms of the intellectual context:

The most striking academic parallel to The Ghost Map is not DeLanda's work at all but Bruno Latour's The Pasteurization of France. It's been a long time time since I cracked upon that tome, and honestly I'm not certain I ever finished it, but Latour is telling a strikingly similar tale to Johnson, tracing the complex interplay of factors that lead Louis Pasteur to his ideas and the world into adopting him.

As it happens, I haven't read a word of Latour since I was in grad school, and I'm not ever sure if I read more than an essay or two back then. It's always fascinating to find out techniques/methodologies that you've stumbled upon in sync with other writers.

Jason Kottke had a great writeup about the book last week, which began with this excellent summary:

The Ghost Map is a book about:

- a bacterium
- the human body
- a geographical map
- a man
- a working friendship
- a household
- a city government
- a neighborhood
- a waste management system1
- an epidemic
- a city
- human civilization

And the sublime VSL (very short list) email newsletter had a rave review this morning:

We like history and we like science, but we’re often too bored and/or stupid to enjoy reading about them. So thank goodness for Steven Johnson, the author of Everything Bad Is Good for You and Emergence. His new book, The Ghost Map (out 10/19), proves once again his unequalled ability to fascinate us, and make us feel smart, as he explains a Big Idea.

But the best thing about their review is the obligatory infographic that accompanies each of their mailings. I love this one.

Oh, and we got an "A" in a short Entertainment Weekly review on the stands (but not online) now.

Comments

[Michael Graham Richard]

Congrats, Steven!

I've quite enjoyed Mind Wide Open and Everything Good is Bad for You, so I'll certainly pick up Ghost Map someday. Might not be for a while because - I'm sure you know how that is - my "to read" list is incredibly long.. But if Aubrey de Grey is right (http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=a_degrey), I might have a thousand years to read all that.