Fat Of The Land: Garbage Of New York -- The Last Two Hundred Years

Fat of the Land: Garbage of New York -- The Last Two Hundred Years

From BooklistIn densely populated New York City, garbage is a contentious political issue that, like the odorous stuff itself, never goes away. Miller is the in-house policy wonk for the city's sanitation department, and he has produced a remarkably readable history of the city's refuse-disposal problem. The smelly subject emerges as a fulcrum for the more obvious elements of civic life, such as politics and corruption, land-use battles, and the construction of the city's transportation infrastructure, which inevitably features public-works autocrat Robert Moses charging through Miller's narrative. Miller preludes that with the nineteenth-century's version of the problem: getting rid of dead animals. For decades a plant on "Barren" (Coney) Island dealt with the offal, while incinerators of other garbage dumped ashes in Queens. Miller's chapters about Moses underscore the paradox of his unaccountability with his ability to deal with garbage, albeit by creating the notorious Fresh Kills Dump on Staten Island. Coursing through the contemporary politics of NYC's garbage problem, Miller's case study is a must for the urban-studies shelf. Gilbert TaylorCopyright