Why is the Chinese practice of using human body wastes as agricultural fertilizer so fascinating to Westerners? What, if anything, can the Chinese history of putting human waste to good agricultural use offer in response to modern ecological problems? In exploring these questions, this detailed monograph looks both at the history of the use of human excrement as fertilizer in China, and at the Westerners who have taken an interest in this practice. In confronting the actual history of excrement recycling in agriculture and its many interpretations, Worster challenges those who reject such practices as “backwards” or “disgusting,” as well as those who conjure up romanticized notions of peasants living in harmony with nature by reusing their natural wastes to create abundance on the land. Instead, this volume interrogates the ecological aspects and the human cost of excrement recycling, offering a clear-sighted history of the role of human “muck” in human civilization.