- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Profile Books (20 Mar 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1846680956
- ISBN-13: 978-1846680953
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14.2 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 424,597 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Daily Mail - '...terrific history of personal hygieneA...a wonderfully interesting and amusing book.'
Book Description
Personal hygiene is something that only other people never seem to get quite right...Yet in this fascinating history of washing our bodies Katherine Ashenburg discovers that cleanliness exists above all in our minds: it is a cultural creation and a constant work in progress...
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
For the modern, middle-class North American, "clean" means that you shower and apply deodorant each and every day without fail. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
For the modern, middle-class North American, "clean" means that you shower and apply deodorant each and every day without fail. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an extremely interesting and enlightening book. The author explains the belief systems behind washing (or non-washing) habits and sanitation through the ages; this makes other people's practices far easier to understand. If you believe that washing opens the pores and thus can let fatal diseases into the body, that linen has special cleansing properties and that only the morally corrupt are interested in smelling sweet then dirt has a certain appeal. The book investigates all sorts of wonderful bathing and showering inventions and the anecdotes and illustrations add depth and detail. The twentieth century section is great anthropology for our times, and I would highly recommend this for anyone interested in social history.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a very good, well written book. It is extremely informative and has unearhted, blown many myths I believed about cleaning and washing habits.The book is written in a very enteraining, easy to read style.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I had this book, lying around for ages, just being put off by the cover, it made me think of something from the 1950s....I just wasn't sold on it. However when I read it, it was fascinating...covering washing rituals from pre- roman times, to advertising of soap in America in the late 19th Century. The breadth of this book is such a pleasure and every few pages you will learn something new or have a new take on the issue. It is a good dip in and out of book too. Fascinating.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
clean but also dirty
Being a plumber by trade (and vocation) I found this narrative fascinating, full of small gems, quotations and anecdotes. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Benny Wielandt
"When all stink, no-one smells"
Every age thinks that its own attitude to cleanliness is the "normal" one. We (modern Europeans and Americans) think that it's normal to shower daily and apply deodorant. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Fiona Hurley
A good read
Kept me rivetted over Christmas with lots of fascinating facts. You either find grime fascinating or you don't, but as a keen watcher of Kim and Aggie I find dirt horribly... Read more
Published on 19 Jan 2010 by Ponder Stibbons
Clean and not-so-Clean
An entertaining study of the extremes of attitude towards bodily cleanliness and personal hygiene that have prevailed over the centuries. Read more
Published on 2 Aug 2009 by Howard Somerville
boring really
cant really enthuse. interesting at first but then seems just like more and more of the same. yet another person who smells had bad teath and dident wash in the olden days. Read more
Published on 30 July 2009 by R. Allen
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