Holy Shit: Managing Manure To Save Mankind
Manure is our and the animal kingdom's way of giving back to the earth, so to say. This book takes a close look at manure - human and otherwise. This book is detailed, sometimes graphic, and I daresay not everyone's cup of tea, for hopefully obvious reasons.
This book is not a humorous take on offals. On garbage. On excrement. It is down in the trenches, close look at waste. Human and animal waste to be specific. Not industrial waste. There is another book for that (The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change
). I mean, take a look at the chapters:1. Manure: The Hot New Farm Commodity - sure to drive an commodities trader in Chicago wild with excitement?
2. The Nitty-Gritty of the Shitty - I kid you not; that's the title.
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4. The Manure Pack - never again will you look at a face-pack the same way.
11. Pigs Can Potty-Train Themselves - will that change your mind about bringing them in as pets?
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13. Meditations on a Meadow Muffin - those would be cow pies. Cow dung. Yes.
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16. The Anti-Bowel Movement - this book is not going anywhere else, be sure about that.
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18. Dealing with our Dread of Human Excrement - we finally get to the bottom of it. It's just excrement after all.
Flushing kitty litter into the toilet bowl is not recommended. Why?"It takes only a temperature of 100.4 degrees Farenheit to destroy roundworm eggs and less than that for other internal parasites, and that temperature is easily reached in a compost pile, but never in a toilet bowl." [page 127]
Did you know, and now that you know, do you care, that there is a "...World Toilet College with a curriculum to accomplish..." or that "There is now a World Toilet Day and a World Toilet Summit, which in 2008 called for the end of the flush toilet."?
I will say this: the book is a fairly interesting read, but not something you will be able to read for any length of time without getting at least a little grossed out. Get past it and it informs in a good way.
Holy Shit: Managing Manure To Save Mankind
© 2011, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.
