I really wanted to love this book. As a current Johns Hopkins graduate student, I spent two weeks in 2018 traveling around Baltimore getting to know its history and its people. I learned so much as a student and I was thrilled to grab an advanced copy of this book in hopes of learning a bit more about the city and the history of the university that calls Baltimore home. Alas, it was not to be.

It's difficult to write a book about a man who destroyed all of his papers and correspondence. I get that. However, Antero Pietila tries to cover a Johns Hopkins the man, Johns Hopkins the University, and Johns Hopkins as the city of Baltimore. It's just too great a swath of time and place to discuss well. Rather than a succinct history of a person, place, or time, Pietila has left us with a rambling narrative that only briefly touches on Johns Hopkins the man but also highlights struggles in funding a university, Civil War strife, grave robbing, building various railroads, race riots, mobs, and more. It's incredibly difficult to follow as time jumps from the 1700s to the 1920s to the 1850s and back again. I often wasn't sure who was being profiled or what century I was even in anymore.

While there are some really interesting bits of information (the part on Arabbers and the history of rent-to-own homes were fascinating) the book is just so difficult to follow and tedious to read that I quickly lost interest. For those who have an intimate knowledge of Baltimore, very little in the book will be a revelation. Most importantly, this book isn't really about Johns Hopkins at all but an overarching view of the history of the university with a greater focus on the city of Baltimore.

It's not often that I don't finish a book, particularly an advanced copy, but this one is going to sit on the "to finish" shelf for a bit longer.

When I saw this book, I knew immediately that I wanted to read it. As a teenager, I spent a whole summer traveling an hour each way with my mom to visit my dad at the Johns Hopkins Hospital after he suffered a brain aneurysm. Fortunately, they saved his life and he lived to be 87 years old!

I enjoyed the first half of the book the most. It was amazing how much Baltimore history that I never knew! Where was all this history when I was growing up? Having read the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, I was pleased that the author added her story. The story about grave robbers was surprising but guess it was typical of the times.

I really enjoyed reading this book but one thing I wish the author would have went into was his comment about Russians causing the riots of 2015. I had not heard that before.

The author wrote a book that I won't soon forget. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in Johns Hopkins and Baltimore, past and present.

* I was provided an ARC to read from the publisher and NetGalley. It was my decision to read and review this book..

Thanks to Rowan and Littlefield and Netgalley for sharing this advanced copy of The Ghosts of Johns Hopkins. I found it fascinating and plan on recommending to some friends who live in Baltimore. Since I don’t live too far away, I’ve visited Baltimore enough, including multiple visits to Johns Hopkins hospital over the years, to be familiar with the bigger streets and neighborhoods. That made the book so much more engrossing to me. I also found that I had to keep Google maps near by because I was so curious about the locations. Overall, I think Mr. Pietila did a masterful job of research and synthesizing disparate histories that all eventually congealed into today’s Charm City (for better or worse, I’ll leave to your own reading). It’s not an uplifting tale, but educational and eye-opening. Recommended for those with an interest in Baltimore, Maryland, or urban histories.