Benjamin Miller
Fat of the Land
Garbage in New York — The Last Two Hundred Years

"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. Miller has crafted a notably elegant treatment of this important though neglected topic." — Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Mr. Miller knows a lot about garbage. On the job, as the former director of policy planning for the New York City Department of Sanitation, he saw and smelled it all; what he doesn't know, he has dug up." — New York Observer

"Miller … has written a very complete history of the city's trash disposal that is detail packed, blessed with clear prose, and generously photographed …" — Library Journal

A city awash in garbage: rats skitter through heaps of rotting debris, disease spreads via offal-clogged waterways, and inhabitants thread through piles of filth. An urban nightmare or a profiteer's dream come true? Benjamin Miller's panoramic view of New York's garbage takes us from the earliest pre-bellum collectors, to the nineteenth-century barons trading in fertilizer and explosives, to the current feuding bureaucrats and environmentalists. He covers social and scientific theories of class and disease — delivering a richly textured history of urban development.

Garbage has literally shaped New York City as it colonized surrounding islands, added bulk to Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan, and constructed parkways, bridges, and tunnels. Miller reveals for the first time the plotting of powerbroker Robert Moses that gave birth to the controversial Fresh Kills landfill and examines the machinations behind its untimely end. As the closing looms in 2001, the curious couplings of public needs and private enterprise, democratic planning and environmental justice that have for so long characterized our approaches to municipal problem solving come to the fore.

Miller also illuminates the personalities who skimmed the grease from New York City's waste and slathered themselves with profit. From the Astors and Vanderbilts to the "Pirate of Peru" (guano merchant), from the upstarts of Tammany Hall to the current inhabitants of the corridors of power, Fat of the Land details the astoundingly rich cast of characters in this intricate, comprehensive history of garbage.

Benjamin Miller was the director of policy planning for the New York City Department of Sanitation and has served as an environmental policy advisor to a variety of organizations.