What Goes In Must Come Out

David Waltner-Toews’s latest book, The Origin of Feces: What Excrement Tells Us About Evolution, Ecology and a Sustainable Society, is an extraordinary document. My thesaurus offers no term beyond “comprehensive” or “all embracing,” but that is the descriptor I need. This tome offers more than a superficial (or even “superfecial”) exposé of matters scatological. It engages its subject matter at every conceivable level of enquiry, curiosity or serendipity, and this is accomplished not with subjective and arcane musings or the author’s personal philosophical preferences, but for the most part with empirical observations and quantitative arguments, drawn from a wide range of disciplines and experiences. Caution: The book is oblivious to treading on (or in) anything socially unpleasant, and in this regard appears to have little or no sympathy with the more delicate reader who must prepare both for vivid descriptions of every type and source of excrement, as well as for a...