Soap Opera

In recent years, water shortages around the world have prompted calls to action, often directed toward the individual: take fewer and shorter showers, launder clothes less often. Increasingly, environmental crises may force us to reckon with our choices — our culture of consumption, unequal distribution of resources, and environmental destruction — but they also prompt us to rethink deeply ingrained ways of living, such as our hygienic practices.

Peter Ward would welcome this reflection. In The Clean Body: A Modern History, he promises to tell the story of the “cleanliness revolution,” offering cleanliness as a lens through which to view a society in transition, whether culturally, technologically, or scientifically.

As I began the book, though, I wondered if it would offer anything new. Writing compelling hist­ory, especially of the recent past, has its challenges. For one thing, there’s often little suspense. From our place in the present, we live...