If ever there was a book that deserved to be the signature book of the WGOM, this baby would have to be it, because it is full of half-baked cr@p. Rose George's
The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters is, without a doubt, the best book I've ever read about poop.
But seriously, this is both an entertaining and important book. George moves deftly from the sewers of London to the slums of India; from high-tech bidets in Japan to "helicopter toilets" in Africa; from biogas digesters in rural China to the biosolids industry in the U.S.

Sh!t is big. An estimated forty percent of the world's population regularly or exclusively defecates in the open, without access to toilet or latrine. "One santitation expert," she writes, "has estimated that people who live in areas with inadequate sanitation ingest 10 grams of fecal matter every day."

"Diarrhea -- nearly 90 percent of which is caused by fecally contaminated food or water -- kills a child every 15 seconds. ... Diarrhea, says ... UNICEF, is the largest hurdle a small child in a developing country has to overcome. ... Public health professionals talk about water-related diseases, but that is a euphemism for the truth. These are shit-related diseases."

The ultimate in bathroom reading, this book is not all gloom-and-doom. George is an accomplished reporter and story-teller. This book weaves together sketches of fascinating entrepreneurial characters fighting for social change and sanitation improvements, up-close-and-personal tours of sewer systems in London and New York, and accessible discussions of the problems of sewage sludge disposal in the U.S. I particularly enjoyed a section on the development of a new, more realistic "test medium" for toilets' flushing capabilities in the early 2000s. The secret ingredient -- miso paste.

I didn't expect [the inventor] to reveal the recipe of his giji obtusu ["fake body waste"], and in fact he's contractually forbidden from doing so. When he found the right brand, he asked to buy 250 kilograms from the importer. "His eyes lit up and he said, `How many restaurants do you own?' I said none and that actually he'd think it was funny but I wanted to use it to test toilets. He didn't think it was funny and suddenly he didn't want to sell it to me anymore."

Already, the book has had an impact on my family (both the Mrs. and The Girl read it before I did). I'm sure you'll be pleased to learn about the aerosol effects associated with flushing a toilet. We close the lid now....

What are you reading?