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

Miller, Benjamin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1568581726 ISBN 13: 9781568581729

Publisher: Basic Books, 2000

Synopsis

A city awash in garbage; rats skittering through heaps of rotting debris; disease spreading through choked waterways; citizens threading through piles of filth - urban nightmare or profiteer's dream come true? Benjamin Miller's panoramic view of New York's garbage takes us from the earliest antebellum collectors, to 19th- century barons trading in fertilizers and explosives, to the current feuding bureaucrats and environmentalists. Fat of the Land covers social and scientific theories of class and disease, in the process offering a richly textured history of urban development. The book reveals for the first time the plotting of power broker Robert Moses that gave birth to the controversial Fresh Kills landfill and examines the curious logic behind its untimely end. Fat of the Land brings to light an often hidden subject, assessing who gains and who loses in the endless battle over garbage.

About this title

About the Author

Benjamin Miller is the former director of policy planning for the New York Department of Sanitation. ""

Reviews

Of all of New York's unnatural resources, garbage is perhaps the most lucrative and, historically, the most contested. This deeply researched, eclectic history of how New York has handled its increasingly mountainous accumulations of trash is social and political history at its best. As Miller's comprehensive view makes clear, the problem of urban garbage disposal has many tentacles. While social philosopher Jeremy Bentham viewed it as a moral problem, yellow fever and cholera outbreaks in the city later revealed that it was also a health problem. When new technology allowed grease to be easily extracted from refuse, however, it became an economic boon; as the metropolis began to expand, garbage also became a basic landfill material, producing millions for developers and city politicians. Miller, the former director of policy for the New York City Department of Sanitation, is equally at ease with the intricacies of Brooklyn ward politics, Frederick Law Olmsted's theories of urban planning and Edison's plan for convenient electricity, and manages to work many fascinating details into his larger economic and political framework. His story grows pointedly relevant when he details the 1938 efforts of municipal administrator Robert Moses to designate the Fresh Kills marshland as a landfill area (in order to fulfill his secret plan to build a bridge to New Jersey from Staten Island)Da move that infuriated environmentalists and continues to haunt the city's administrations. Miller has crafted a notably elegant treatment of this important though neglected topic. Agent, Malaga Baldi. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In 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 Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1568581726
• ISBN 13: 9781568581729
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 425