29.95 cloth. Halliday, Stephen. The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victoria Metropolis, (Phoenix Mill, Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire, Great Britain: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1999). 210pp.; $36.95 cloth.Public works management lacks a large body of literature that discusses the history, construction, and management of large-scale public works projects. The three books reviewed here help to fill that void. These books show two different time periods of the development and management of large public projects, all underground or underwater tunnel-type projects. Two of the books are historical overviews of the building of nineteenth-century sewer systems in New York (Goldman) and London (Halliday). Their stories include the growth of professional public administration and of the importance of professions in the political process. Fetherston reviews a contemporary project, perhaps the largest public works project in history, the English Channel underwater tunnel connecting England and France. All three books describe the political, financial, and management difficulties in administering large scale projects.On the surface, the three stories appear to be divergent. On the one hand, two authors present narratives of nineteenth-century sewer construction in two of the world's largest cities-while the other is a tale of a recent project. Yet, the stories are intertwined by the establishment of contemporary civil engineering practices, the growth of the project management discipline, convoluted intergovernmental relationships, and windows of opportunity that give salience to the projects.The books are written from different perspectives. Fetherston's work is written from the perspective of a journalist. Goldman brings a historian's. Halliday's work brings the London sewer project to life through the biography of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, Chief Engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works.This review is constructed in three sections. The first section discusses Goldman and Halliday's books on the nineteenth-century projects. The second section gives a review of Fetherston's study of construction of the English Channel Tunnel. The final section compares the three books.
Nineteenth-Century Sewer ProjectsGoldman and Halliday graphically show the importance of a common twentieth-century phenomenonavailable drinking water. In the nineteenth century, development of water systems that would bring potable water to the neighborhoods was a critical political, social, and medical issue. Of related importance was development of sanitary sewer systems that would provide uncontaminated drinking water by separating water from sewage. The tales of water and sewer system development in New York and London are remarkably similar. In order for modern water and sewer systems to develop, several items had to converge: a critical mass of population, the epidemiological knowledge of disease transmission, the technological development of water closets, the institutionalization of emerging professions, and...
