The Big Necessity: Adventures In The World Of Human Waste

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Description

Prepare to embark upon an eye-opening tour through the world of human waste. With a journalist's nose for a story, and a campaigner's desire for change, Rose George is our undaunted guide through this fascinating and little travelled terrain. She takes us underground into the Victorian brick sewers of London and New York in the company of flushermen, and overground to meet the heroes of India's sanitation movement. We examine the hi-tech Japanese revolution in toilet engineering; we investigate whether re-naming sewage sludge 'biosolids' might provide an eco-friendly alternative to petrol; and we stand right in front of the single biggest unsolved public health problem on the planet.

Witty, serious and original, The Big Necessity proves that shit doesn't have to be a dirty word.

Reviews

The first popular study written on the subject. And popular it deserves to be. George has the right kind of breezy serious approach needed with this universal taboo * Daily Mail *
A fascinating, wise, calm and scrupulously drawn portrait of the world and its waste ... [this is] a seriously important book -- Simon Winchester
George bravely submerges herself in the tragedy and occasional comedy of global sanitation. Sludge, biogas, sewage: I ate up and wanted more! The most unforgettable book to pass through the publishing pipeline in years -- Mary Roach, author of STIFF and BONK
An exhaustive analysis of lavatorial history that offers a snippet of information at every opening * Observer *

Author Bio

Rose George is a freelance writer and journalist whose first book, A Life Removed: Hunting for Refuge in the Modern World, was long-listed for the Ulysses Reportage Prize. She contributes regularly to the London Review of Books, Guardian, Independent and others. She has reported on Saddam Hussein's birthday party, Afghan beauty salons and the alternative world cup final between Bhutan and Montserrat.