The Big Necessity – Rose George ****

Strictly, this book shouldn’t be here at all as there’s not a lot of science in it – but taking the original, wider definition of scientia, I certainly feel that I gained a fair amount of knowledge from Rose George’s excellent book, on a subject that certainly needs more exposure than it usually gets – the essential job of dealing with human waste.

Of course there is a lot of science in the subject, but George’s book concentrates on the practical – it’s more about the engineering and sociology than the pure science. She’s at her best when describing excursions down the sewers with the men who work there, or venturing into water treatment plants.

At the heart of the book is the horrendous statistic that 2.6 billion people don’t have sanitation – not even a trench latrine – terrible because there’s no point giving access to clean water if someone can’t get away from their faeces. Equally fascinating to western eyes was the amazing story of the Japanese ‘high function’ toilet with seated seat and wash and dry features.

If I have a complaint it’s that there was a bit too much on China and Africa, and that George over-emphasizes the solids. She spends ages on the flush toilet, but hardly mentions urinals – perhaps because she hasn’t been exposed to them in all their wondrous variety. This combination of little problems means surprisingly (given she apparently wrote the book there) she doesn’t mention France, with it’s slowly dying penchant for stand-up/squat toilets, and its lack of concern about screening urinals from view. We read a lot about the lack of cubicle doors in China, but nothing about a European nation that thinks nothing of sticking a urinal unshielded on the outside of a beach building.

Even so, it’s an excellent read with surprises at every turn – or should that be in every U-bend?

Paperback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Phenomena - Camille Juzeau and the Shelf Studio ****

I am always a bit suspicious of books that are highly illustrated or claim to cover 'almost everything' - and in one sense this is clearly hyperbole. But I enjoyed Phenomena far more than I thought I would. The idea is to cover 125 topics with infographics. On the internet these tend to be long pages with lots of numbers and supposedly interesting factoids. Thankfully, here the term is used in a more eclectic fashion. Each topic gets a large (circa A4) page (a few get two) with a couple of paragraphs of text and a chunky graphic. Sometimes these do consist of many small parts - for example 'the limits of the human body' features nine graphs - three on sporting achievements, three on biometrics (e.g. height by date of birth) and three rather random items (GNP per person, agricultural yields of various crops and consumption of coal). Others have a single illustration, such as a map of the sewers of Paris. (Because, why wouldn't you want to see that?) Just those two s...

The Bright Side - Sumit Paul-Choudhury ***

When I first saw The Bright Side (the subtitle doesn't help), I was worried it was a self-help manual, a format that rarely contains good science. In reality, Sumit Paul-Choudhury does not give us a checklist for becoming an optimist or anything similar - and there is a fair amount of science content. But to be honest, I didn't get on very well with this book. What Paul-Choudhury sets out to do is to both identify what optimism is and to assess its place in a world where we are beset with big problems such as climate change (which he goes into in some detail) that some activists position as an existential threat. This is all done in a friendly, approachable fashion. In that sense it's a classic pop-psychology title. For me, Paul-Choudhury certainly has it right about the lack of logic of extreme doom-mongers, such as Extinction Rebellion and teenage climate protestors, and his assessment of the nature of optimism seems very reasonable, if presented at a fairly overview leve...

Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin Five Way Interview

Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin (born in 1999) is a distinguished composer, concert pianist, music theorist and researcher. Three of his piano CDs have been released in Germany. He started his undergraduate degree at the age of 13 in Kazakhstan, and having completed three musical doctorates in prominent Italian music institutions at the age of 20, he has mastered advanced composition techniques. In 2024 he completed a PhD in music at the University of St Andrews / Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (researching timbre-texture co-ordinate in avant- garde music), and was awarded The Silver Medal of The Worshipful Company of Musicians, London. He has held visiting affiliations at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and UCL, and has been lecturing and giving talks internationally since the age of 13. His latest book is Quantum Mechanics and Avant Garde Music . What links quantum physics and avant-garde music? The entire book is devoted to this question. To put it briefly, there are many different link...

Search This Blog