Katherine Ashenburg

For the first-century Roman, being clean meant a public two-hour soak in baths of various temperatures, a scraping of the body with a miniature rake, and a final application of oil. For the seventeenth-century aristocratic Frenchman, it meant changing his shirt once a day, using perfume to obliterate both his own aroma and everyone else’s, but never immersing himself in – horrors! – water. By the early 1900s, an extraordinary idea took hold in North America – that frequent bathing, perhaps even a daily bath, was advisable. Not since the Roman Empire had people been so clean, and standards became even more extreme as the millennium approached. Now we live in a deodorized world where germophobes shake hands with their elbows and where sales of hand sanitizers, wipes and sprays are skyrocketing. The apparently routine task of taking up soap and water (or not) is Katherine Ashenburg’s starting point for a unique exploration of Western culture, which yields surprising insights into our notions of privacy, health, individuality, religion and sexuality. Ashenburg searches for clean and dirty in plague-ridden streets, medieval steam baths, castles and tenements, and in bathrooms of every description. She reveals the bizarre rescriptions of history’s doctors as well as the hygienic peccadilloes of kings, mistresses, monks and ordinary citizens, and guides us through the twists and turns to our own understanding of clean, which is no more rational than the rest. Filled with amusing anecdotes and quotations from the great bathers of history,The Dirt on Cleantakes us on a journey that is by turns intriguing, humorous, startling and not always for the squeamish. Ashenburg’s tour of history’s baths and bathrooms reveals much about our changing and most intimate selves – what we desire, what we ignore, what we fear, and a significant part of who we are.

An Unsanitized History

The Dirt on Clean

A delightful debut novel in the vein of Younger and The Unbreakables, with a hint of Nora Ephron, about a journalist who stumbles into an unusual relationship with the woman married to her former husband. A journalist in Washington, DC, Liz has turned lemons into lemonade after her husband walked out on her a decade ago. She likes her life--she's the editor of Her Turn, a weekly column in which readers write about their lives, has a few romantic nibbles--some better than others--a good relationship with her teen-aged son, and has come to terms with the shock and heartbreak of her divorce. Or so she thinks. One day at work, she receives a letter for the column she can't ignore, because it's written by her ex-husband's current wife--AKA the other woman. It is the beginning of an unexpected correspondence between the two women--but only Liz knows the truth about their connection. Could it be she still cares? How far will she take this unusual relationship? And what happens if the truth comes out? Her Turn is an immensely readable, joyful novel about fidelity and forgiveness that explores one woman's second act in life, and the ties that still bind her to the first.

A Novel

Her Turn

Cleanliness is next to godliness. At least that was the point of view espoused by John Wesley in 18th century England. But accounts of people bathing go back to the Bronze Age in the Indus Valley. All the Dirt on Getting Clean is a lively, informative exploration of the evolution of keeping clean. Starting with a number of myths about cleanliness, the author quickly establishes how our ideas have changed drastically over time, and how the definition of cleanliness in one part of the world may differ radically from another. There is just enough of a gross factor that the target audience of 9 to 12-year-olds will find the book as entertaining as it is enlightening. Colorful spreads, lots of sidebars, humorous illustrations, and photos make it ideal for browsing as well as reading in depth.

All the Dirt on Getting Clean

'I return to Paris in five days. Stop washing.' So wrote Napoleon to Josephine in an age when body odour was considered an aphrodisiac. In stark contrast, the Romans used to bath for hours each day. Ashenburg's investigation of history's ambivalence towards personal hygiene takes her through plague-ridden streets, hospitals and battlefields. From the bizarre prescriptions of doctors to the eccentricities of famous bathers, she presents us with all the twists and turns that have led us to our own, arbitrary notion of 'clean'.

An Unsanitised History of Washing

Clean

an unsanitized history

The dirt on clean

A fascinating social history of grieving in America takes the nation's death rituals, or lack thereof, to task, unraveling the current traditions surrounding death and mourning. Reprint.

What We Do When People Die

The Mourner's Dance

Historia brudu

One of the prices we pay for human attachment is that we mourn when a loved one dies. Every society has found ways to support and contain the mourner's grief, from the heavy crape veils of the Victorians to the boisterous wakes of the Irish, from the Jewish custom of shiva to Mexico's Day of the Dead. When her daughter's fiance died suddenly, Katherine Ashenburg experienced the varieties of modern mourning, the expected ceremonies and intuitive rituals that gave solace to her family. Their power to comfort or not led her to explore the choreography of mourning across centuries and cultures, the rich and endlessly inventive ways we have devised to mark a universal and deeply felt plight. North American culture favors a mourning that is private and virtually invisible, but as this captivating work reveals, the formalized grieving customs of the past were so integrated into daily life that ultimately they gave rise to public parks, department stores, and ready-to-wear clothing. In the poignant keepsakes, prescribed mourning garb, carefully tended cemeteries, etiquette book directives, Internet support groups, and displays of desperate keening or outrageous revelry lie clues to a society's most elemental beliefs and keys to personal consolation. "The Mourner's Dance uncovers the psychological wisdom embedded in mourning customs ancient and new, and the value of ritual in restoring a community unraveled by loss. It is about how, in the wake of death, we go on living. "From the Hardcover edition.

A delightful novel in the vein of Younger and The Unbreakables, with a hint of Nora Ephron, about a journalist who stumbles into an unusual relationship with the woman married to her former husband. A journalist in Washington, DC, Liz has turned lemons into lemonade after her husband walked out on her a decade ago. She likes her life—she’s the editor of My Turn, a weekly column in which readers write about their lives, has a few romantic nibbles—some better than others—a good relationship with her teen-aged son, and has come to terms with the shock and heartbreak of her divorce. Or so she thinks. One day at work, she receives a letter for the column she can’t ignore, because it’s written by her ex-husband’s current wife—AKA the other woman. It is the beginning of an unexpected correspondence between the two women—but only Liz knows the truth about their connection. Could it be she still cares? How far will she take this unusual relationship? And what happens if the truth comes out? Her Turn is an immensely readable, joyful novel about fidelity and forgiveness that explores one woman’s second act in life, and the ties that still bind her to the first.

Jeremy Schmidt

Alison Kahn

Thomas Schmidt

Offers over twenty driving tours focusing on different parts of Canada, and provides information on museums, parks, and historical sites

National Geographic's Driving Guides to America Canada

A surprising, rich and beautiful first novel about women's friendship for readers of Paula McLain and Elena Ferrante, by a bestselling non-fiction author who has brilliantly turned her hand to fiction. In Sofie & Cecilia, beloved non-fiction author and journalist Katherine Ashenburg draws upon her formidable skill and maturity as a writer to craft an extraordinary and splendid debut novel. This is the story of a lifelong female friendship, set in the fascinating art world of Sweden between 1900 and 1940, just as modern art and the beginnings of the Scandinavian mid-century modern design movement were inspiring a creative revolution across northern Europe. Loosely based on the lives of celebrated artists Carl Larsson and Anders Zorn ("Nils Olsson" and "Lars Vogt" in the novel), Ashenburg transports us behind both the public and domestic scenes--and canvasses--of these larger-than-life men to reveal the lesser-known but equally astounding and rich stories of the women who married them: restlessly creative artist-in-her-own-right Sofie Olsson, and fiercely private and intelligent curator Cecilia Vogt. Here is a gorgeous gem of a book: surprising, unique, layered with insight into the nuances of female friendship as it stretches, changes, and deepens in unexpected ways over a lifetime. Woven effortlessly through this tapestry, like a beautiful motif, is absorbing detail about Scandinavian painting, design, and textile work; European history and sexual politics; the country life, city salons, vibrant art, and folklore of Sweden; and the secrets and challenges of bright, talented women juggling marriage, career, individual aspirations, and family life inside an artist's household in the early twentieth century.

Katherine Ashenburg

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