Hours of fascinating reading. Also, you can wash yourself with it.

This is a liquid without which I simply couldn'tlive.

I purchase one thirty-two ounce bottle of Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Liquid Soap per year, which is really all I need.  This stuff is pretty concentrated, so it only takes a half-dozen drops to get through a whole shower, or two or three to shave or wash my hair. 

Of course, I can also use it to do dishes or wash dead bugs off the front of my truck.  This concoction can do anything.  I even tried brushing my teeth with it once.  It's non-toxic, so you can do that, although I wouldn't recommend it.  (Upside: minty-fresh breath.  Downside: soapy-fresh breath.)

This soap, and a whole line of other, similar products, are manufactured by a company in Escondido, California, operated by the children of Dr. Emanuel Bronner.  Dr. Bronner died in 1997, aged ninety, but led an interesting life.

Dr. Bronner was born Emanuel Heilbronner in 1908, in Heilbronn, Germany, a member of a family of soapmakers.  Unfortunately, even having a whole city named after your family didn't cut much ice with Hitler, especially if you were Jewish.  Emanuel dropped the "Heil" from his name and bolted for the States in 1929.  He tried to get his parents to come along as well, but they refused, eventually becoming victims of the Holocaust.

He started making his own soaps at home, by hand and using only pure ingredients, with his family helping.

This is where the story gets a bit hazy.  Around this time, Bronner started to develop and espouse a homemade philosophy, which he called the "All-One-God Faith," an attempt to reconcile Jewish and Christian beliefs with some Kipling quotes thrown in for good measure.  It's all a bit convoluted and difficult to follow, really, but you can try to play along at home if you like, because every single line, quote, or, apparently thought Bronner ever had in regards to his personal beliefs are printed on the side of the bottle. 

(A side note: in the 1980s, Lincoln worked for a time at a health-foods warehouse, which carried these soaps.  Back then, the bottle labels were printed on paper and then glued on by hand, and several copies of each label were often included in each case.  Nowadays, the labels are printed directly on the bottle.)

The soap is very popular with Evergreen State students, hippies, and other organic whole-foods types because it contains hemp oil, which is to that sort of person what Mountain Dew is to NASCAR fans.  However, it's very popular with other people, including me, because it works, and works well, and is very cost-effective.

All their products are still made by hand from one hundred percent free-trade and organic products in a completely non-mechanized factory.  Even the cases are packed by hand.

In the Seattle area, you can find this soap in a variety of types, both bar and liquid, at PCC or GNC stores.  It used to be available at QFC as well, but I'm not sure if they still have it now that Kroger bought them out. 

It's certainly worth checking out though.  Here are a few links.

Dr Bronner's website

Dr Bronner's Magic Soapbox, a documentary film about Dr Bronner's soap