100 books like The Big Necessity

This book not only provides a fascinating look at how we actually digest food, pluck out essential nutrients, and produce poop from the leftovers passing through the gut, but also includes charming and witty illustrations of many of these steps by the author’s sister, Jill.

An entire book about the gut? Yes, and it’s so interesting, with some gentle humor and well-thought-out analogies that help demystify what you’ll come to believe is a superhero of an organ.

I made notes, highlighted particularly illuminating sections, and found myself saying, “Wow! I didn’t know that!” throughout the book. It definitely gave me a new sense of wonder and appreciation for the intricate abilities of my own body.

One of the many things that astonished me about Lina’s lovely book is that although I put off reading it until I had finished my own book, for fear of too much overlap, I need not have worried.

She deftly uses different yet compelling examples for an exciting read that convincingly makes the case for giving a crap about crap. She also uses her own family’s history and experience as immigrants to provide some surprisingly moving scenes in support of her larger points.

Even after all the poop-related research I had done, I learned plenty more, which was a nice revelation: something that I thought I knew still had the ability to surprise me in profound ways.  

Should bookstores shelve Gulp in the Humor section or the Science section? Both.

With her usual comedic and eclectic approach to her subject, Roach ranges and rages through our digestive system end to end. She mixes plenty of real science with quirky and unexpected diversions headlined by chapter titles such as "Dead Man’s Bloat and Other Tales from the History of Flatulence Research"; "Up Theirs, The Alimentary Canal as Criminal Accomplice"; and "Stuffed, The Science of Eating Yourself to Death".

It’s informative. It’s fun. Worthy of digestion.

I love this book because it turns everything we think we know about poo on its head. If there was one definitive pathogen-laden substance your mother told you to never touch, poop is it! We’re all naturally disgusted by it. But feces, whether human or animal, are as natural as air, and are absolutely essential for thriving ecosystems, for soil health, and even for climate change. In nature, what’s one species trash is the other species treasure, and no one portrays this better than David Waltner-Toews, as he describes why dung beetles feast on doodies and why some animals eat their own droppings. The planet has a use for everybody’s poo, including ours, so you will have a newfound appreciation of excrement after reading this book. 

This is a fascinating and compelling journey through the most neglected and significant public health innovation since vaccines and nutritional guidelines, the modern toilet.

Author Chelsea Flanagan takes us on a wild ride through the history of this neglected and highly significant home appliance, including contemporary efforts to make toilets more environmentally friendly and even less expensive. Relatively inexpensive, safe sewage saves millions of lives a year, more than all our modern medicines combined.

Shawn is fearless, good-hearted, and laugh-out-loud funny.

As an educator, performance artist, and founder of the POOP Project, he has dedicated much of his work to reducing the taboo and stigma of talking about our own bodies, especially the natural act of pooping. Mixing in his trademark humor with historical anecdotes and a genuine love of both people and the planet, this book will make you smile, laugh, and feel a deeper connection with a part of your body that deserves far more attention.

It’s a very fun and inspiring read about rejecting shame and celebrating your own inner power. 

This is a serious scholarly investigation of the origin and eventual triumph of the efficient market hypothesis. Polillo is very smart and the theoretical sophistication high. It combines a thorough history with some extremely interesting ideas about thought, culture, and social processes fleshed out with several different methods of analysis and interpretation.

Viviana Zelizer’s book told me the fascinating story of the cultural transition from a time when children provide to parents mostly financial well-being to a time when children provide only life well-being.

In the 18th century, in America, parents welcomed the arrival of their children mostly as workers when children were young and as security when parents were old. By the mid-19th century, however, parents of the urban elite welcomed their children mostly for their life well-being benefits in love, smiles, and successes that make parents proud.

Children, in Zelizer’s language, became ‘sacralized,’ economically worthless but emotionally priceless. By the early 20th century, working-class and poor parents joined elite parents in sacralizing their children. 

When I first read this book, even though I hold a Ph. D in sociology, it changed my whole view of the discipline. 

I was very disappointed in graduate school at first. Then I read some of Peter Berger’s works, who until his recent death, was the most well-known sociologist of religion. He wrote about making the case for a supernatural reality. This was something that was, and, still is, considered heretical in sociology. 

I met Peter a few years ago and told him how he changed my view of sociology. He smiled.

Sometimes I think people just don’t get smarter, or write smarter books, than Ehrenreich, so of course, in a 5 best list, I’m going to put one of hers up. The title of her book comes from obituaries – at a certain point, not entirely clear just when, a death does not have to be explained. When a 93-year-old dies, we don’t have to ask ‘of what?’ the way we do when a 47-year-old does. And yet – what about 73? We ask, and we blame: did they smoke? Not exercise?  Eat poorly? Not get screened early enough?  

While others have focused on the over-medicalization of dying, the repeated hospitalizations, the tubes, and wires, Ehrenreich is looking at the medicalization of living to be old – living from one wellness activity to the next, interspersed with medical testing.  In a world in which ‘health’ means medicine, health care means insurance… show more.