glitterbomb47's review against another edition
2.0
This book is a mile wide and an inch deep. Several chapters feel like magazine articles instead of chapters in a book. It often seemed like he just poked around on a few websites and then multiplied words to make the word count for a chapter.
fantasticraccoon's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
3.75
sophie_pesek's review against another edition
4.0
I am a long time skeptic of Big Soap™ and this audiobook reinforced everything I believe. Wash bacteria off your hands, for sure (especially now), but also respect the microbiome on your biggest organ. I love my face mites.
endearmint's review against another edition
challenging
funny
informative
slow-paced
nate_meyers's review against another edition
3.0
"Clean" is the perfect example of a book that should've been an article. The writing is engaging & funny, but the main points are simple: bacteria on our skin serve good purposes, we can afford to shower & deodorize less, and we can afford to use less harsh and less total soap or soap products. Hypothetically, if one has disrupted or damaged their skin microbiome from a lifetime of sterility or overdoing it on self care--how does he/she walk it back? This we really don't know as we still don't know which bacteria are good and which are bad, which cause eczema and which don't, and how to best package bacteria or bacterial lysates for delivery to the skin. Boom, that's your article. To stretch the content into a book, James writing becomes unfocussed and unnecessarily expansive. He writes about the history of hygiene dating back to Biblical times, germ theory, and the historical production and marketing of soap. These are certainly interesting topics and I picked up some interesting factoids, but the fly-overs of these expansive topics are often cursory and besides-the-point. In sum, Clean is an entertaining & quick read but would've been better if it was more focussed and condensed into long-article (or articles) form.