The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

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The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic – And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World  is a real-life detective story where the detective is hunting down not a criminal but the cause of a disease. The “detectives” in this page-turner are Reverend Henry Whitehead and Dr. John Snow, who together investigate the outbreak of cholera in London in 1854. The way that they solve the case using mapping techniques is fascinating; Snow proved that the spread of the disease was due to contaminated drinking water, not a "miasma" in the air.