Once again proving that every aspect of the human condition has or will have a book written about it, Who Cut the Cheese? chronicles farting in history, linguistics, art, literature, music, religion, entertainment, and other areas of endeavor. When covering a subject like this, there are only two ways you can play it: solemn and studious or whimsical and tongue-in-buttcheek. Luckily, Jim Dawson goes for the latter. Among the things you'll learn:

· "The fart is created mostly by E. Coli and other bacteria in your intestine that feast upon fermenting food and then collectively microfart inside you; the air you swallow and your stomach's alkaline secretions also have an effect on your farts. On the average a fart is composed of about 59 percent nitrogen, 21 percent hydrogen, 9 percent carbon dioxide, 7 percent methane, and 4 percent oxygen--all of which are odorless. But less than 1 percent of a fart is made up of tiny amounts of other chemicals--such as ammonia and skatole (from the Greek skatos, meaning shit)--that stink so pungently, people can smell them at levels of 1 part in 100 million parts of air . . ."

· Hitler was a chronic farter. To combat his constant breaking of wind, he took a quack cure that contained, among other things, strychnine and belladonna. For eight years, he ingested high amounts of these poisons, which very likely contributed to his irritability and dementia.

· Dinosaurs farted so much during the Jurassic period that, due to the Greenhouse Effect, they increased the earth's temperature enough that the atmosphere was made hospitable for the rise of mammals.

· Presently, cows, termites, and elephants are farting so much that they might raise the earth's temperatures to a point where humans can no longer survive.

· Horace, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Swift, Blake, Mozart, Salvador Dali, and other creative geniuses have waxed eloquent about passing gas. Bosch, Beardsley, and other renowned artists have immortalized farts in their art.

· ". . . [T]he word pumpernickel comes from "devil's fart" in German. Pumpern means "to fart" and nickel is a "devil" or "goblin." The idea, according to etymologist Martha Barnette, was that dark, heavy pumpernickel bread could "produce outbursts of flatulence as powerful as those of Satan himself."

· In 75 A.D., when Judea was under Roman occupation, a Roman soldier farted at Jews gathered for a Passover feast. They turned on the Romans, who called in reinforcements. Ten thousand people, mainly Jews, died as a result.