The Dirt on Clean

Zusatztext "Brimming with lively anecdotes, this well-researched, smartly paced and endearing history of Western cleanliness holds a welcome mirror up to our intimate selves, revealing deep-seated desires and fears spanning 2000-plus years." Publishers' Weekly In clear and straightforward prose, Ashenburg condenses a vast amount of information into smooth chapters. . . . She includes many quirky tidbits of cultural history, such as the role played by bathing in Eliza Doolittle's transformation from Cockney flower-seller to fair lady and the appearance in the 1930s of vaguely menacing magazine ads that threatened women with spinsterhood if they dared let their breath or armpits smell.. . . . Dozens of charming illustrations distinguish a book notable for its engaging design as well as its illuminating content. Kirkus Reviews Informationen zum Autor KATHERINE ASHENBURG is the author of both books and many magazine and newspaper articles. She has written for The New York Times , The Globe and Mail and Toronto Life , among other publications. Her books include The Mourner's Dance: What We Do When People Die , The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History , which was published in twelve countries and six languages, and the novel Sofie & Cecilia . In former incarnations, she was a producer at CBC Radio and was The Globe and Mail 's Arts and Books editor. In 2012, she won a Gold Medal at the National Magazine Awards for her article on old age. Klappentext For the first-century Roman! being clean meant a public two-hour soak in baths of various temperatures! a scraping of the body with a miniature rake! and a final application of oil. For the seventeenth-century aristocratic Frenchman! it meant changing his shirt once a day! using perfume to obliterate both his own aroma and everyone else's! but never immersing himself in - horrors! - water. By the early 1900s! an extraordinary idea took hold in North America - that frequent bathing! perhaps even a daily bath! was advisable. Not since the Roman Empire had people been so clean! and standards became even more extreme as the millennium approached. Now we live in a deodorized world where germophobes shake hands with their elbows and where sales of hand sanitizers! wipes and sprays are skyrocketing. The apparently routine task of taking up soap and water (or not) is Katherine Ashenburg's starting point for a unique exploration of Western culture! which yields surprising insights into our notions of privacy! health! individuality! religion and sexuality. Ashenburg searches for clean and dirty in plague-ridden streets! medieval steam baths! castles and tenements! and in bathrooms of every description. She reveals the bizarre rescriptions of history's doctors as well as the hygienic peccadilloes of kings! mistresses! monks and ordinary citizens! and guides us through the twists and turns to our own understanding of clean! which is no more rational than the rest. Filled with amusing anecdotes and quotations from the great bathers of history! The Dirt on Clean takes us on a journey that is by turns intriguing! humorous! startling and not always for the squeamish. Ashenburg's tour of history's baths and bathrooms reveals much about our changing and most intimate selves - what we desire! what we ignore! what we fear! and a significant part of who we are. The Social Bath Greeks and ­Romans Odysseus, his wife, Penelope, and their son, Telemachus, were a notably ­well-­washed family, and the reasons would have been obvious to the first audience of The Odyssey . Greeks in the eighth century b.c. had to wash before praying and offering sacrifices to the gods, and Penelope frequently prays for the return of her wandering husband and son. A Greek would also bathe before setting out on a journey, and when he arrived at the house of strangers o...

Autorentext
KATHERINE ASHENBURG is the author of both books and many magazine and newspaper articles. She has written for The New York Times, The Globe and Mail and Toronto Life, among other publications. Her books include The Mourner's Dance: What We Do When People Die, The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History, which was published in twelve countries and six languages, and the novel Sofie & Cecilia. In former incarnations, she was a producer at CBC Radio and was The Globe and Mail's Arts and Books editor. In 2012, she won a Gold Medal at the National Magazine Awards for her article on old age.

Klappentext
For the first-century Roman, being clean meant a public two-hour soak in baths of various temperatures, a scraping of the body with a miniature rake, and a final application of oil. For the seventeenth-century aristocratic Frenchman, it meant changing his shirt once a day, using perfume to obliterate both his own aroma and everyone else's, but never immersing himself in - horrors! - water. By the early 1900s, an extraordinary idea took hold in North America - that frequent bathing, perhaps even a daily bath, was advisable. Not since the Roman Empire had people been so clean, and standards became even more extreme as the millennium approached. Now we live in a deodorized world where germophobes shake hands with their elbows and where sales of hand sanitizers, wipes and sprays are skyrocketing.

The apparently routine task of taking up soap and water (or not) is Katherine Ashenburg's starting point for a unique exploration of Western culture, which yields surprising insights into our notions of privacy, health, individuality, religion and sexuality.

Ashenburg searches for clean and dirty in plague-ridden streets, medieval steam baths, castles and tenements, and in bathrooms of every description. She reveals the bizarre rescriptions of history's doctors as well as the hygienic peccadilloes of kings, mistresses, monks and ordinary citizens, and guides us through the twists and turns to our own understanding of clean, which is no more rational than the rest. Filled with amusing anecdotes and quotations from the great bathers of history, The Dirt on Clean takes us on a journey that is by turns intriguing, humorous, startling and not always for the squeamish. Ashenburg's tour of history's baths and bathrooms reveals much about our changing and most intimate selves - what we desire, what we ignore, what we fear, and a significant part of who we are.

Leseprobe
The Social Bath

Greeks and ­Romans


Odysseus, his wife, Penelope, and their son, Telemachus, were a notably ­well-­washed family, and the reasons would have been obvious to the first audience of The Odyssey. Greeks in the eighth century b.c. had to wash before praying and offering sacrifices to the gods, and Penelope frequently prays for the return of her wandering husband and son. A Greek would also bathe before setting out on a journey, and when he arrived at the house of strangers or friends, etiquette demanded that he first be offered water to wash his hands, and then a bath. This is a book full of departures and arrivals, as Odysseus struggles for a decade to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, and Tele­machus searches for his father. Their journeys are the warp and weft of this great adventure ­story.

When Odysseus visits the palace of King Alcinoos, the king orders his queen, Arete, to draw a bath for their guest. Homer describes it in the deliberate, formulaic terms reserved for important customs: “Accordingly Arete directed her women to set a large tripod over the fire at once. They put a copper over the blazing fire, poured in the water and put the firewood underneath. While the fire was shooting up all round the belly of the copper, and the water was growing warm . . . the housewife told him his bath was ready.”

Then the housekeeper bathes Odysseus, probably in a tub of bra…

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