Richard Jones - Call Of Nature: The Secret Life of Dung

Rating 5/5

Review:
Interesting and very entertaining

Why isn't the whole world covered in an immensely thick layer of poo?  No, seriously.  All the countless billions of creatures who have ever lived spent their whole lives eating and producing dung as a result, so where is it all?  It's just one of the interesting questions addressed by Richard Jones in this brilliant book.

Although it seems like a thoroughly repellent subject for a book, Jones makes dung interesting and very entertaining.  He is a distinguished scientist, so the scientific content is top-notch while being very accessible to the layman.  We get authoritative information about different digestive mechanisms, dung's role in the ecosystem and the huge variety of creatures whose existence depends upon it, and it is all done with real flair and genuine wit, so the book is a pleasure to read.  This, from the first chapter gives a flavour of the style:

"We all have our diarrhoeal anecdotes, and in any other circumstances I'd keep mine diplomatically quiet.  But since this is a book about my own exploration of excrement, I cannot pass without at least commenting obliquely on the accident in the Temple of the Buddha's Tooth in Kandy, Sri Lanka in 1992, where it was forcefully brought home to me that not all of the world's drinking water is safely potable."

I knew I was in safe hands after reading that; the whole thing is beautifully written and I laughed out loud in several places while reading the book. 

Call Of Nature is nicely illustrated and very well structured; there are sections on things like the nature and process of digestion, sewage disposal, uses of dung, and so on.  I was constantly coming across little gems of interest – like why are cow pats and horse-droppings so different in texture and smell, when both of them feed by grazing grass?  It's not something I'd given any thought to before, but, like a lot in the book, once the topic had been raised I found it really interesting.

In short, I found the whole book thoroughly readable and enjoyable.  To me, this is what popular science writing should be: accurate, enthusiastic, in-depth and very entertaining.  I loved Call Of Nature and can recommend it very warmly indeed.