The American Spectator's Florence King writes a fascinating and incisive review of Emily Cockayne's new book Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 1600-1770. While I have not read the book, Ms. King has given us reason to pick up a book by an Oxford scholar, published by a university press, chock full of footnotes, detailing just how poorly sanitation and living conditions were back in Merry Olde England. What Ms. King says in her review is that this subject IS topical -- it is not drab history, but rather a harbinger of our current fears of societal breakdown at the basis of commonly-accepted standards of hygiene we've lived with for decades.

Ms. King cites two recent news stories to illustrate how this subject is topical. The first story is Hurricane Katrina, which saw reporters focusing on just this topic: people wading through raw sewage, the sanitary conditions in the Superdome and Convention Center, and the awful smells and filth. "The average TV reporter," King says, "shies away from unusual words; if they need a dramatic description they will settle for ‘surreal,' but Katrina correspondents pulled out all the stops. The refugees were trapped in an ‘abyss.' It was ‘stygian... infernal... spectral... sepulchral.' One reporter even called the whole city of New Orleans a ‘charnel house.'"

The other news story she cites is one first reported here: the airplane with the overflowing toilets. Ms. King says the endless loops of passengers recalling the smells and the sights reinforces our fears that we are just a few blips away from the awful conditions which existed in the timeframe Ms. Cockayne's book explores.

"Our obsessive need to talk about s--t and our compulsion to see it as a symbol of death exposes with merciless clarity what is really on our minds. We are aware of our national regression and harbor a deep fear that the country is breaking down. Among the many intriguing quotations in this book is one by the 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume, who said: ‘A lack of personal hygiene excites an uneasy sensation in others.' We live with that uneasy sensation every day. Water shortages, low-flow shower heads, sluggish ever-shrinking toilets, blackouts, brownouts, and now food scares that become the subject of two-hour documentaries so that all the reporters get to say ‘diarrhea' in every other sentence.

"Americans in the Age of Terrorism live with the dread certainty that one day soon we will be stuck indefinitely in some airport for weeks, with no possibility of showering or even washing, without clean underwear but with diarrhea, our toothbrushes confiscated, and all women forced to surrender every sanitary napkin and tampon they packed so that Security can rip them open to see if there's anything inside.

"The uneasy sensation we feel is not fear of another 9/11 per se, but a fear that another 9/11 will be the Day the Plumbing Stopped."

Had I seen this book in my local store, I would have ignored completely; but after this review, I think it will be a fascinating read. Well done, Florence King!