The Ghost Map (2006)

The best introduction to public health as a detective story. In 1854 cholera brought more than 500 fatal attacks in ten days around Broad Street in Soho, and Johnson follows the physician John Snow and the Reverend Henry Whitehead as their paths crossed over the outbreak, the pump and the hunt for its first case. Whitehead is the reason it belongs here. His knowledge of the neighborhood and its families turns the outbreak from a map of dots into a street of people, and the pairing of a clergyman with a doctor arguing against the prevailing view is beautifully handled. The closing section, which applies Snow's lessons to modern cities, wanders; the rest is superb.