The Sanitary City

The Sanitary City represents the culmination of Martin Melosi's years of pioneering scholarship on urban infrastructure and the urban environment. This body of work fully justifies the characterization of Melosi as a "historical innovator." [End Page 391] The Sanitary City is a major work of scholarship—a comprehensive, perceptive, well-written, lavishly illustrated, and attractively published book. And, although it draws upon Melosi's past writings, it goes well beyond them in terms of its scope and depth, drawing from extensive research in the primary and secondary literature. Melosi's detailed narrative skillfully traces the history of sanitation services—water supply, sewerage, and solid waste collection—through American history from colonial times to the present. He carefully notes the importance of technology transfer from Europe, as well as the successes and failures of these imported technologies

Archaeology · Colonialism · History of technology · Innovator · Political science · Sanitary sewer · Sanitation · Scholarship · Scope (computer science) · Sewerage · Sociology · Water supply · Work (physics) · Engineering · Environmental Engineering · History · Law · Water Governance and Infrastructure