Fresh Kills

Fresh 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 State
Fresh 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 Boston
Melosi 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 York
One 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 World
Fresh 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 *
Fresh Kills is an epic drama, extraordinarily rich in archival detail, that traces New York City’s long saga of waste disposal from the early nineteenth century through the present day. -- Lily B. Pollans * H Environment *