13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book is wher it's at!, July 13, 1999
By A Customer
Having long considered myself an amateur anthroscatologist of perhaps Stygian proportions, I was very intrigued by news of this book and found it a sheer delight. My first exposure to the subject occured at the age of 1 day and I've been poking and prodding and sniffing around this forbidden topic ever since, although up to now there has been very little said in the popular press about it, other than smirky one-liners on South Park and, of course, sanitized references in family comics like The Family Circus.
I especially agree with the author's contention that Nature selects those organisms that produce the neatest "packages," this has always been a pet theory of mine and I am glad someone more learned and erudite has pinched off this theory and left it unflushed and proud in the bowl for all to see.
Now, some people may be offended by the subject matter of this book, but poop is something we all do and as a matter of fact it may be the most creative thing many of us ever do. There is a vast and powerful network of machinery and social organization devoted to waste products that many of us are never exposed to or think about, but it is there nonetheless. We couldn't survive without this hidden Turdocracy and the author does a bang-up job of intimating just which creek we'd be up sans paddle without it.
The book is well-constructed and its many ancedotes and bon mots make it an easy read for the dump-and-runner, although the seriously constipated academic types and their dir-snake-honking lay counterparts will find its minutae and careful reasoning a rich minefield of knowledge. I give it three full loads in the Pampers, ratings-wise.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The adult version of "Everyone Poops", August 22, 2004
This review is from: Merde: Excursions in Scientific, Cultural, and Socio-Historical Coprology (Paperback)
"For some reason, among the most fragrant coffees of Java are reputed to be those made by roasting beans that have passed through the intestinal tracts of civets."
How could anyone possibly object to a book that disseminates facts such as the above as freely as certain birds disseminate seeds in their droppings? Ralph A. Lewin, professor of marine biology at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography thoroughly investigates the science, culture, and social history of coprology even down to the motto that was supposedly stamped on the British Navy's official toilet paper, i.e. "England expects every man to do his duty."
This book is a hoot--or maybe I should say 'a toot,' most especially the chapter on "Smells and Other Chemical Components, including Gases." Lewin quotes everyone from Hildegard von Bingen (ca. 1155) to President Clinton, beginning in the chapter on "Terminology and Cultural Attitudes" in which he somewhat coyly does not translate a couple of expressions in Greek and Latin. One of the most interesting revelations in this chapter is that the Chinese don't generally make a vulgar expletive out of their term for excrement, i.e. 'da bien' which the author translates as "the 'big convenience' (as distinct from the more fluid 'small convenience')..." Most languages, including the sign language used by chimpanzees embrace this most common example of coprolalia.
Another interesting revelation (this book is full of them) is the French restatement of Murphy's Law: "La loi d'emmerdement maximum."
The final chapter "Myths, Legends, and Holy Ordures" covers some of the supposed medical uses of feces: "Hippocrates asserted that pigeon droppings were efficacious against baldness, though whether this claim was based on personal experience is not recorded." Perhaps Hippocrates was correct, since one hardly ever sees monuments to bald generals in public spaces. This might also be the reason that some people believe it is lucky to be decorated by a bird dropping.
Barring the first and last chapters, most of the text is devoted to the physical manifestations of feces, and the various ways that animals and humans deal with this common organic by-product. This includes discussions of territorial markers, chamber pots, sewage, abstergents such as toilet paper and corn cobs, nutritional values, and uses for construction and decoration.
"Merde" is short enough to read in a single evening, but you may spend the rest of your life quoting bits of it to your friends.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unusual historical survey & essay re excrement, September 9, 1999
By A Customer
This crappy little book is a brief, extremely entertaining survey of excretaia. The author, in revealing the history of toilet paper and the phenomenon of virginally-fragrant "Holy Odures," displays an erudite, Rabelasian delight in minutiae related to the task: His compact, one hundred-fifty-page work generates a further seven-page bibliography, as well as a twenty-eight page index.
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