As recently as the 1880s, most American cities had no effective means of collecting and removing the mountains of garbage, refuse, and manure-over a thousand tons a day in New York City alone-that clogged streets and overwhelmed the senses of residents. In his landmark study, Garbage in the Cities, Martin Melosi offered the first history of efforts begun in the Progressive Era to clean up this mess. Since it was first published, Garbage in the Cities has remained one of the best historical treatments of the subject. This thoroughly revised and updated edition includes two new chapters that expand the discussion of developments since World War I. It also offers a discussion of the reception of the first edition, and an examination of the ways solid waste management has become more federally regulated in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Melosi traces the rise of sanitation engineering, accurately describes the scope and changing nature of the refuse problem in U.S. cities, reveals the sometimes hidden connections between industrialization and pollution, and discusses the social agendas behind many early cleanliness programs. Absolutely essential reading for historians, policy analysts, and sociologists, Garbage in the Cities offers a vibrant and insightful analysis of this fascinating topic. A seminal examination of a too often neglected by-product of the technical and economic revolutions of the twentieth century. ― Technology and Culture Tells us much about American consumption, treatment of natural resources, social organization, and public spirit. ― Journal of American History An important book on a vexing, critical problem. . . . This is an issue on which history has much to say, and we can benefit by learning from the littered path we have trod. ― Journal of Economic History Whether a sign of poverty (then) or of abundance (now), trash has been and remains a primary by-product of urban life. With this reprint edition, a new generation of scholars will have ready access to a foundational study of solid waste management in American cities, a book that set out lines of inquiry on equity and environmental justice, on women and municipal housekeeping, on urban ecology that redefined urban studies. This is a classic. ― Greg Hise, University of Southern California A groundbreaking description of how modern garbage collection and disposal were born out of a reaction to the filthy living conditions that were a byproduct of the Industrial Revolution. . . also assesses the impact of federal and state solid waste and recycling laws. ― Waste Age This revised edition of a seminal work in the field of urban environmental history traces the development of waste management and related technologies from the Progressive Era to the present. Martin V. Melosi is Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen University Professor and founding director of the Center for Public History at the University of Houston. Melosi received the Distinguished Research Award and the Distinguished Service Award from the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH), and the Esther Farfel Award from the University of Houston. He has served as president of the ASEH, the National Council on Public History, the Public Works Historical Society, and the Urban History Association. Melosi has written or edited nineteen books, including the award-winning The Sanitary City , and most recently, Atomic Age America.