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Unlike some really good "point history" books such as Salt, Dirt, Longitude, etc., this book should be "flushed".Save your money for something worth your reading time. I was hoping to learn more about the history of plumbing--sewage disposal, water supply, rainwater control, and the resulting societal impacts. Instead, the book is 10% content, fluffed with 90% filler to extend into a sellable length "book".
He quotes Francis of Assisi to make his case that Christianity made using the bathroom and being physically clean a "dirty" thing (page 144) but also quotes him to say that Christians should be clean (page 145).But, those slip-ups do not diminish the book as a whole. On page 30 he claims the Hellenistic Age is named for Helen of Troy, which is ridiculous. Chapter 8 "Blame It On the Christians" is an equally ridiculous attempt to blame all of the Western world's issues with defecation and urination (mostly cutesy names like poo-poo and the desire to defecate alone) on Christianity. W. Very entertaining. He meanders all over the world of bathrooms, pipes and open-pit sewers but the trip is a fun one. Hodding Carter covers plumbing from the Ancient Indians, Greeks and Romans to modern day Japanese badet toilet in this meandering romp through sewers, both past and present.Carter's light-hearted writing style makes it a fun read. There are a lot of detours, but it's fun and informative.That being said, there are a couple of stumbles.
This can be treacherous, because most writers/ actors/ performers are so much about themselves that I don't really care. If you didn't have clean water - or a place to conveninently get rid of the other - where would we all be.
If he could only see one candle, he was going in a straight line; if he could see both, then he was going crooked. There are fascinating tidbits - like the fact that tunnel-diggers [in early days] would have two people behind them holding candles.
This book is clever - the title sounds like something off-beat and silly, and it draws you in, and before you know it, you're learning all kinds of history - and having fun. What we take so much for granted is, in fact, at the core of how we can be a civilization.
Necessity is the mother of invention - who knew. Starts out as a first-person narrative ("I got interested in this because.").
However, the author does this skillfully, and it seems like an enlightening conversation.
The MAJOR weakness of this book is its total lack of illustrations or photos. This book, if merely for its chosen subject matter, had a lot of promise. Why a book which is about engineering -- even if it is not an exceedingly serious text -- would not have graphics is beyond me. There are many points at which he is describing spatially complex structures or contraptions, and a photo or diagram would serve the readers' understanding well. At times the author taps this promise well, but he often struggles with personal tangents which don't hold the interest of this reader. The best parts of the book are when he takes a broader view of the implications of water, waste, and plumbing for civilization; in this way, I thought the book closed well.
The underlying message to the book is that if we would all be a little less squeamish about the subject of human waste, and give the matter of its disposal the respect it deserves, the world would be a better place.I often read books at a nearby coffee shop or while eating dinner by myself. But he best thing about this book is that despite all the bathroom humor, Carter is dead serious, that the world owes a great debt to those who build and maintain the world's sewage systems. With this book, do that at your own risk. Hodding Carter found a way to take a subject few would touch, and turned it in an engaging ode to sanitation engineers from Roman times until the present. Clearly, Carter has a lot of fun with the subject matter, as a chapter called "The Power of Poo" would suggest.
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