For more than 20 years, Martin Melosi has thoughtfully considered the environmental state of the American city. One year after publishing The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastruc ture in America from Colonial Times to the Present, Melosi issued this important retrospective of his work in urban environmental history. In a series of 11 previously published articles and book chapters that Melosi wrote over a 20-year span, Effluent America provides his environmental analogue to John Kenneth Galbraith's Affluent Society: economic development and prosperity comes with a price.