The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History
kwi 2014 · Macmillan + ORM
4,3star
3 opinie
E-book
370
Strony
family_home
Odpowiednia
info
Informacje o e-booku
A spirited chronicle of the West's ambivalent relationship with dirt
The question of cleanliness is one every age and culture has answered with confidence. For the first-century Roman, being clean meant a two-hour soak in baths of various temperatures, scraping the body with a miniature rake, and a final application of oil. For the aristocratic Frenchman in the seventeenth century, it meant changing your shirt once a day and perhaps going so far as to dip your hands in some water. Did Napoleon know something we didn't when he wrote Josephine "I will return in five days. Stop washing"? And why is the German term Warmduscher—a man who washes in warm or hot water—invariably a slight against his masculinity? Katherine Ashenburg takes on such fascinating questions as these in Dirt on Clean, her charming tour of attitudes to hygiene through time.
What could be more routine than taking up soap and water and washing yourself? And yet cleanliness, or the lack of it, is intimately connected to ideas as large as spirituality and sexuality, and historical events that include plagues, the Civil War, and the discovery of germs. An engrossing fusion of erudition and anecdote, Dirt on Clean considers the bizarre prescriptions of history's doctors, the hygienic peccadilloes of great authors, and the historic twists and turns that have brought us to a place Ashenburg considers hedonistic yet oversanitized.
The question of cleanliness is one every age and culture has answered with confidence. For the first-century Roman, being clean meant a two-hour soak in baths of various temperatures, scraping the body with a miniature rake, and a final application of oil. For the aristocratic Frenchman in the seventeenth century, it meant changing your shirt once a day and perhaps going so far as to dip your hands in some water. Did Napoleon know something we didn't when he wrote Josephine "I will return in five days. Stop washing"? And why is the German term Warmduscher—a man who washes in warm or hot water—invariably a slight against his masculinity? Katherine Ashenburg takes on such fascinating questions as these in Dirt on Clean, her charming tour of attitudes to hygiene through time.
What could be more routine than taking up soap and water and washing yourself? And yet cleanliness, or the lack of it, is intimately connected to ideas as large as spirituality and sexuality, and historical events that include plagues, the Civil War, and the discovery of germs. An engrossing fusion of erudition and anecdote, Dirt on Clean considers the bizarre prescriptions of history's doctors, the hygienic peccadilloes of great authors, and the historic twists and turns that have brought us to a place Ashenburg considers hedonistic yet oversanitized.
Oceny i recenzje
4,3
3 opinie
O autorze
Katherine Ashenburg is a journalist, lecturer, and regular contributor to The New York Times. Her last book with FSG, The Mourner's Dance, was published in 2003.
Oceń tego e-booka
Podziel się z nami swoją opinią.
Informacje o czytaniu
Smartfony i tablety
Zainstaluj aplikację Książki Google Play na Androida i iPada/iPhone'a. Synchronizuje się ona automatycznie z kontem i pozwala na czytanie w dowolnym miejscu, w trybie online i offline.
Laptopy i komputery
Audiobooków kupionych w Google Play możesz słuchać w przeglądarce internetowej na komputerze.
Czytniki e-booków i inne urządzenia
Aby czytać na e-papierze, na czytnikach takich jak Kobo, musisz pobrać plik i przesłać go na swoje urządzenie. Aby przesłać pliki na obsługiwany czytnik, postępuj zgodnie ze szczegółowymi instrukcjami z Centrum pomocy.
