Description: As people crowded into British cities in the nineteenth century, industrial and biological waste byproducts, and then epidemic followed them. Britons died by the thousands in recurring plagues. Figures like Edwin Chadwick and John Snow pleaded for measures that could save lives and preserve the social fabric. In London: Water and the Making of the Modern City, John Broich follows the politically charged and arduous task of bringing a municipal water supply to one of the world's most complex urban environments.
Review Quotes: A pleasure to read. Broich demonstrates that the resolution of the problems of supplying water to London--the first world city--hampered as it had been by deeply entrenched interests, brought about a new level of ideological politicization of the water industry in Britain. He shows how the dynamics of 'progress' and inertia are not straightforward.-- "Raymond Smith, independent environmental historian"