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The Culture of Flushing: A Social and Legal History of Sewage, Jamie Benidickson, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007, 432 pages.
I confess that the word "culture" in the title of Jamie Benidickson's book threw me off. I was expecting an anthropological take on how human waste has been treated through history and in different cultures. The Culture of Flushing, instead, is a thorough and methodical legal and social history of the treatment of waterways in relationship to sewage disposal in European and North American society. Benidickson should have reversed the title and subtitle of his book.
Although the forward claims that the book is written with the "general reader ... in mind," the general reader does not appear to have had an important influence on the mind Benidickson was in. I have trouble picturing the "general reader" who could delight in...