Ted Steinberg, author of Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York:
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.

Michael Rawson, author of Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston:
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.

David Stradling, author of The Nature of New York: An Environmental History of the Empire State:
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.