In Catherine McNeur's meticulously researched environmental history of antebellum New York City, laborers and elites wrestle for control over space in the booming city. Taming Manhattan explores the battles waged by the people literally sloshing around in the trough of urbanization that was New York between 1815 and 1865. Her focus is on the loss of the "de facto urban commons" that had long been used by the poor to raise livestock and run recycling businesses and the efforts of the municipal government to control the process through legislation (7). As the city matured, elites began clearingthis quasi-common land for residences and parks. McNeur shows how efforts to "tame" the city came at the expense of the poor: "One man's nuisance, of course, was another's livelihood" (7).
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