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Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America . By Kathleen M. Brown. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. 464 pp., $45.00, hardback, ISBN 978- 0-300-10618-3.
Kathleen Brown is at her best in Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America . Her vivid descriptions of European, American, African, and Native American "body work" from the early modern period up through the nineteenth century make for a fascinating book if for no other reason than the topic of caring for and cleaning one's body is a subject familiar to all readers. For the professional historian, however, the greatest value of Foul Bodies is Brown's astute analysis of how the diverse inhabitants of the Atlantic World vied for power with routine demonstrations of their professed bodily superiority. While cleanliness, or a lack thereof, had long since demarcated the physically, morally, and spiritually fit from the unfit within western...