Engaging This provocative and well-written story will make readers more cognizant of how recently it became a part of human history and, given its requirements, how limited hygiene remains on a global scale. * Journal of Modern History * This entertaining book reads like Eugen Webers classic Peasants into Frenchmen, as Steve Zdatny leads the reader on a veritable romp through earthy quotations from the archives, to memoirs, to literature. Along the way, he reveals a hygienic French revolution, as cleanliness definitively replaced crap in modern France. - Stephen L. Harp, Distinguished Professor, University of Akron, USA. Deeply researched and charmingly written, it holds wide appeal for scholars of infrastructure, urbanism, nation building, and the sensesand the co-constitutive relationship between them. * H-Net Reviews * Zdatny assesses and challenges long-standing critiques of hygienic modernisation * English Historical Review * There are riches embedded in this books anecdotes, quotations, and footnotes that will amply repay the attention of historians of any nation or era interested in bodily practices, changing mores, and sanitary infrastructure. * Social History *
