sewer

✍ Scribed by Jessica Leigh Hester

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 201
• Series: Object Lessons
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
Jessica Leigh Hester leads readers through the past, present, and future of the system humans have created to deal with our own waste, and argues that sewers can be seen as a mirror to the world above at a time when our behaviors are drastically reshaping the environment for the worse.
What can underground pipes tell us about human eating habits and the spread or containment of disease, such as COVID-19? Why are sewers spitting out plastic and trash into waterways around the world? How are clogs getting gnarlier and more numerous? Sifting through the muck offers a fresh way to approach questions about urbanization, public health, infrastructure, ecology, sustainability, and consumerism—and what we value.
Without understanding sewers, any attempt to steward the future is incomplete.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

✦ Table of Contents

Half Title Page
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Introduction: Our Sewers, Ourselves
Chapter 1: Cathedrals of Sewage
Chapter 2: Wipes & Pipes
Chapter 3: Fatbergs
Chapter 4: Waterways
Chapter 5: Super Sewers
Chapter 6: The Innovators
Chapter 7: Conclusion: The afterlife of sewage
Acknowledgments
Index