Description
Book SynopsisFresh Kills—a monumental 2,200-acre structure on Staten Island—was once the world’s largest landfill. Martin V. Melosi provides a comprehensive chronicle of Fresh Kills that offers new insights into the growth and development of New York City and the relationship among consumption, waste, and disposal.
Trade ReviewFresh Kills is excellent in many ways–clarity of prose, strength of narration, depth of research, and command of the literature. Melosi is one of the finest urban historians working today, and he is, although this will sound like an unintended slight, the premiere historian of garbage. He possesses as thorough a knowledge of the many relevant secondary literatures as anyone. One could not find a more appropriate scholar to take up this topic. -- David Stradling, author of
The Nature of New York: An Environmental History of the Empire StateFresh Kills frames Staten Island’s iconic landfill as not just a repository for solid waste but also a monument to consumer culture. This is an immensely readable and valuable book by a distinguished scholar of environmental history. -- Michael Rawson, author of
Eden on the Charles: The Making of BostonMelosi tells the story of the dump that ate New York with panache, rescuing this erstwhile salt marsh from the late-night comedians and, in the process, telling us something deeply important and troubling about postwar American capitalism. -- Ted Steinberg, author of
Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New YorkOne of the pioneers of urban environmental history gives us a meticulously researched and sweeping narrative of New York, Staten Island, and the landfill known as Fresh Kills, revealing a seamy underside of modern prosperity, mass consumption, and New York politics. The maps and illustrations are marvelous. -- J.R. McNeill, author of
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the 20th-Century WorldFresh Kills is also a piece about mourning the scars in our landscapes engineered to harbor the remnants of modern mass consumption, and a subtle warning that we should not avert our gaze from them. It is Martin V. Melosi at his best. * Gotham Center for New York City History *
The landfill and the park now being constructed atop it are—like Melosi’s fine book—important reminders that we cannot
entirely forget or be free of what we discard. * Enterprise and Society *
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Dilemma of Consuming
Part I: The Backdrop1. Island City
2. Wasting Away
Part II: Staten Island: Borough of Last Resort3. The Quarantine
4. The Garbage War
Part III: Seeking a Disposal Sink5. The Go-Away Society
6. One Best Way
7. Futile Protests
Part IV: Living with and Surviving the Landfill8. The Burning Question
9. The End of Isolation
10. An Environmental Turn
11. Fiscal Crisis and Disposal Dilemma
12. Fresh Kills at Midlife
13. Barge to Nowhere
14. A New Plan
Part V: The Road to Closure15. Secession
16. Closure
17. Now What?
Part VI: The Post-Closure Era18. 9/11
19. Regeneration
20. Crossroads
Conclusion
Notes
Index
