Flush
The Remarkable Science of an Unlikely Treasure
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
For readers of Giulia Enders’ Gut and Bill Bryson’s The Body, a surprising, witty and sparkling exploration of the teeming microbiome of possibility in human feces from microbiologist and science journalist Bryn Nelson.
The future is sh*t: the literal kind. For most of human history we’ve been, well, disinclined to take a closer look at our body’s natural product—the complex antihero of this story—save for gleaning some prophecy of our own health. But if we were to take more than a passing look at our poop, we would spy a veritable cornucopia of possibilities. We would see potent medicine, sustainable power, and natural fertilizer to restore the world’s depleted lands. We would spy a time capsule of evidence for understanding past lives and murderous ends. We would glimpse effective ways of measuring and improving human health from the cradle to the grave, early warnings of community outbreaks like Covid-19, and new means of identifying environmental harm—and then reversing it.
Flush is both an urgent exploration of the world’s single most squandered natural resource, and a cri de coeur (or cri de colon?) for the vast, hidden value in our “waste.” Award-winning journalist and microbiologist Bryn Nelson, PhD, leads readers through the colon and beyond with infectious enthusiasm, helping to usher in a necessary mental shift that could restore our balance with the rest of the planet and save us from ourselves. Unlocking poop’s enormous potential will require us to overcome our shame and disgust and embrace our role as the producers and architects of a more circular economy in which lowly byproducts become our species’ salvation. Locked within you is a medicine cabinet, a biogas pipeline, a glass of drinking water, a mound of fuel briquettes; it’s time to open the doors (carefully!). A dose of medicine, a glass of water, a gallon of rocket fuel, an acre of soil: sometimes hope arrives in surprising packages.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Science journalist Nelson debuts with a beguiling look at a "less-than-charismatic" topic: feces. Humans are the planet's "second most prolific poopers" (cattle being the first), Nelson writes, and it's a shame that most human feces are flushed away. Human waste can enrich soil, holds clues for anthropologists to learn about the past, and can save lives (via human-to-human fecal transplants). As well, biogas produced by fecal microbes can be used as fuel, and it's possible to cook with biochar made from excrement. There's a long history of humans using waste: ancient nomadic warriors dipped arrowheads in it, and in the Middle Ages, European invaders catapulted bubonic plague victims' feces over town walls. Nelson has an easy hand in accessibly explaining the chemical interactions involved in upcycling waste, and is generous with enlightening anecdotes. It adds up to a convincing case that humans ought to get more comfortable with what they flush, as doing so can "help us transition to a more circular economy in which we discard nothing and abandon the fantasy that we exist outside of ancient cycles of... growth and decay." This is pop science done right.