Book Review: The Big Neccessity

It’s not like I set out to read a book about poop. I’m on the reviewer’s list for Holt – I LOVE being on their list! – and they send me stuff to read. Jason, the guy at Holt who lets me know when new, travel related things are coming out suggested that I might be interested in The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters because, he said, it’s sort of a travel related read. I didn’t completely believe him, but I’ve learned to trust his suggestions.

Author and researcher Rose George sets out on a grand tour of loos and sewers and outhouses and latrines and places that go from surprisingly pleasant to the nastiest of nasty.  George starts in the sewers of London, and travels the planet in search of sanitation set ups, she’s in slums in India, villages in Africa, pig styes in China, high tech toilet manufacturing plants  in Japan…  she talks to sanitation officials and activists and people who do the dirtiest of dirty work. It’s surprisingly compelling, kind of a page turner even.

The book may make you into an obsessive hand washer. It will certainly make you look at flies with renewed terror, especially if you’re traveling somewhere with less than hygienic toilet facilities – or none at all. It sent me into the exercise of cataloging the – um- places I’ve gone on my travels,  from the sublime to the nauseating. The book will also make you eye your own household plumbing with a renewed sense of not only what a privilege it is to have a private bathroom, but also, what a drain on resources a toilet can be.

It’s an odd thing to find myself saying “You gotta read this book about poop!” but I’ve found myself saying exactly that more than once. George does a amazing job of taking a totally unappealing topic and making it so fascinating that you can’t look away. I swear I could not put it down.

• Slate ran some excerpts from the book here.
• There are some photos from George’s travels (nothing icky, I promise) here.
• Get a copy from Amazon, here
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