Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity

10 reviews for Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity

1. 

   Lee M – 4 January 2025

   history of hygiene
   Book was fine. Interesting subject if you like that sort of thing. Wish I could just submit a rating without having to write a justification.

2. 

   Amazon Customer – 4 January 2025

   Five Stars
   The book was in excellent condition and very enjoyable reading.

3. 

   Serge Berthier – 4 January 2025

   A disappointment
   Maybe I was expecting too much. The topic was an interesting one, but Virginia Smith drawns us into endless repetition ending either with a lieu commun or a far-fetched idea. As for the chronology, after of history implies some sort of chronology, it is just chaotic. The book lacks clarity of purpose.At the end, I gave up and did not finish it

4. 

   M. Nikitin – 4 January 2025

   Conceptually interesting, but peppered with inaccuracies
   After encountering “the Roman writer Herodotus” on the pages of Ms. Smith’s book, one has to wonder what other glaring mistakes may have crept into the narrative.

5. 

   Vittorio De Alfaro – 4 January 2025

   Italy since 1796 and the rest
   I am sorry; I entered this item – and the next one – without knowing exactly

6. 

   Denise Gianna – 4 January 2025

   scholarly and interesting
   I found Smith”s book enlightening. Certainly info from ancient and even early twentieth century was more interesting than later chapters addressing modern mores and trends, but that is to be expected. I enjoyed it!

7. 

   Diccon – 4 January 2025

   Can I get to the end?
   This is an unfair review insofar as I have only managed to get through about 10% of it. The question is whether I can face the remaining 90%. There is no doubt that the author has done considerable research but I find the narrative rambling and incoherent.

8. 

   H. W. Stone – 4 January 2025

   This is an academic background work.
   This is an academic background work. As such it is the compilation of a lot of details– some of which I feel are miscited or lack context. The real value is in putting this in one volume to allow people to look at it and struggle through the basic history of “being clean” and how that definition changes with era and context.Too much of it was based on the author’s opinion of the events instead of just stating the events and expecting college students to actually think through what was happening. On the other hand, i have recently met some college students whose conclusions of historic events boggles my mind, so perhaps this is a safer way of handling it.At the end of the book is some relevancy to UK society behaviors that are a wonderful illustration of the fact the UK and the US are an ocean apart in many ways– but that also helps you remember to think things over, not just “accept” without thinking.Clean is the best book of its kind, mostly because it is an almost untouched topic that makes many people uncomfortable. The balance point means I gave it a three out of five– but it is still worth the read.

9. 

   Ian Archibald – 4 January 2025

   Loses focus by going too deep on many marginal areas

10. 

    GIULIO GUIZZI storico del cleaning ha scritto il libro – 4 January 2025

    This book gives a good description of personal hygiene.-I will put it in my library dedicated to cleaning and sanitation