An engrossing fusion of erudition and anecdote,The Dirt on Cleanconsiders 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. Stop washing"? And why is the German termWarmduschera man who washes in warm or hot waterinvariably a slight against his masculinity? Katherine Ashenburg takes on such fascinating questions as these inThe Dirt on Clean, her charming tour of attitudes toward hygiene through time. Did Napoleon know something we didn't when he wrote to Josephine, "I will return in five days. Don't eat while reading this I tried, you won't want to. This book explores various TIMES in history along with various CULTURES and tells the reader what culture, at that time period, believed was 'clean'. 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. All the Dirt: A History of Getting Clean by Katherine Ashenburg is a fascinating book on the history of mankind and getting 'clean'. 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. The question of cleanliness is one every age and culture has answered with confidence.
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