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The Unmentionable World Of Human Waste And Why It Matters
Metropolitan Books
October 2008
On Sale: October 14, 2008
304 pages
ISBN: 0805082719
EAN: 9780805082715
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
An utterly original exploration of the world of human
waste that will surprise, outrage—and
entertain Produced behind closed doors, disposed
of discreetly, and hidden by euphemism, bodily waste is
something common to all and as natural as breathing, yet we
prefer not to talk about it. But we should—even those of us
who take care of our business in pristine, sanitary
conditions. For it’s not only in developing countries that
human waste is a major public health threat: population
growth is taxing even the most advanced sewage systems, and
the disease spread by waste kills more people worldwide
every year than any other single cause of death. Even in
America, 1.95 million people have no access to an indoor
toilet. Yet the subject remains unmentionable. The
Big Necessity takes aim at the taboo, revealing
everything that matters about how people do—and don’t—deal
with their own waste. Moving from the deep underground
sewers of Paris, London, and New York—an infrastructure
disaster waiting to happen—to an Indian slum where ten
toilets are shared by 60,000 people, Rose George stops along
the way to explore the potential saviors: China’s five
million biogas digesters, which produce energy from waste;
the heroes of third world sanitation movements; the inventor
of the humble Car Loo; and the U.S. Army’s personal lasers
used by soldiers to zap their feces in the field. With
razor-sharp wit and crusading urgency, mixing levity with
gravity, Rose George has turned the subject we like to avoid
into a cause with the most serious of consequences.
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