{"product_id":"the-dirt-on-clean-an-unsanitized-history-9780374531379","title":"The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA spirited chronicle of the West's ambivalent relationship with dirt \u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe question of cleanliness is one every age and culture has answered with confidence. 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. 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. Did Napoleon know something we didn't when he wrote Josephine \"I will return in five days. Stop washing\"? And why is the German term \u003ci\u003eWarmduscher\u003c\/i\u003e--a man who washes in warm or hot water--invariably a slight against his masculinity? Katherine Ashenburg takes on such fascinating questions as these in \u003ci\u003eDirt on Clean\u003c\/i\u003e, her charming tour of attitudes to hygiene through time. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhat could be more routine than taking up soap and water and washing yourself? And yet cleanliness, or the lack of it, is intimately connected to ideas as large as spirituality and sexuality, and historical events that include plagues, the Civil War, and the discovery of germs. An engrossing fusion of erudition and anecdote, \u003ci\u003eDirt on Clean\u003c\/i\u003e considers 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eKatherine Ashenburg\u003c\/b\u003e is a journalist, lecturer, and regular contributor to \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e. Her books include \u003ci\u003eThe Mourner's Dance\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Dirt on Clean.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"North Point Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50491697594642,"sku":"9780374531379","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_a656a4e4-a9dc-4551-9cfc-c2d8f9bd4a6d.jpg?v=1730550386","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-dirt-on-clean-an-unsanitized-history-9780374531379","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}