"Nick Kawa takes readers on an excretory adventure. He 'follows the object,' albeit an object that most other anthropologists have shied away from: human waste. There's nothing else like it!"--Matthew Wolf-Meyer, author of American Disgust: Racism, Microbial Medicine, and the Colony Within "You gotta hand it to Nick Kawa. How many people can write an entire book 'about shit--human shit.' Not only has Kawa created a rigorous academic work that forces the reader to dive deeply into human excrement, but his excellent discourse at times is nothing short of poetic. This is not an easy row to hoe, considering that the book covers global sanitation, ecosan, biosolids, industrial pollution, compost toilets, microbes, race, politics, hope, frustration, injustice, and justice. And a lot of other things in between. I found the book a pleasure to read, and I applaud any academic who has the courage, like Kawa, to think outside the box, tackling a difficult, nay taboo, topic with intelligence and grace.

"--Joseph Jenkins, author of The Humanure Handbook and The Compost Toilet Handbook "This profound ethnographic study of repulsion takes us well beyond disgust, revealing--and creatively refusing--the ways modern excrement rebuffs attention, comprehension, and even thought itself."--Alex Blanchette, author of Porkopolis: American Animality, Standardized Life, and the Factory Farm "Kawa proves a wise and witty guide on a journey like no other, through the porcelain bowl and far beyond. Readers will indeed find release here: from the pathologies of our waste culture, into promising new forms of collective living and leaving."--Anand Pandian, author of Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down.