Leslie Rosenthal's book investigates how nineteenth-century British courts coped with the dilemma of protecting the rights of landholders who suffered from the effects of the waterborne pollution caused by the Industrial Revolution while progressing the sanitary and technological reforms of that age. The presence of toxic industrial and domestic waste in river waters at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution was a new and sudden departure from the largely sustainable and self-cleansing production methods of eras before it. While British politicians today exhort us to rediscover the boldness and ambition of the Victorians, this book reminds us that their gift to us is a mixed lesson. Contra laissez-faire arguments past and present, it also suggests that the most impressive achievements of the Victorian era were not projects undertaken by private companies, but rather the public water and sewage schemes funded by local authorities in cities such as Manchester and Birmingham. This book follows the conflict of interests faced by not only bigger cities such as these but also smaller towns such as Tunbridge Wells, Leamington Spa, and Harrogate. Additionally, Rosenthal has found examples from private individuals and smaller organizations to give this book a human touch.

Of course, the connection between economics and pollution remains a passionate subject. For every investment from fracking, to High Speed 2, to “Green deals,” politicians and promoters cite benefits for the economy to promote the project while detractors point out pollution and nuisance elements. History tells us that the consequences of major industrial projects are rarely simple and immediate—many outcomes become apparent only after several years. This was a lesson that Victorians had to learn the hard way. The difficulties of the early Victorians, who had no precedents to go by, to cost out pollution and nuisance are presented in the book: the lack of legally useful documentation they faced, the absence of methodological approaches such as double-blind research that would have helped them evaluate evidence; their reliance instead on a comparative case study approach used for politics and psychology; and even the haphazard nature of their nuisance and tort law. Britain had the privilege as well as the frustration of learning to deal with pollution before other nations. In some ways, this book is a record of those early attempts.

Climate change has necessitated the need for a look over time at the economic choices that the Victorians made. The scarcity value of our common environment, the need for equitable exploitation, and the consequent pollution are subjects of an ongoing debate, all the more relevant for us today. The vision of men such as Edwin Chadwick , who had a major role in the development and popularization of the Victorian water carriage system, has cast long shadows, not only in England but also in colonial settlements and the rest of the world. The sight of the poor today in many of these former colonies struggling to secure water for drinking, let alone use it for sanitation, is largely a result of Victorian-era choices. Immediate economic concerns won out. The mitigation of climate change in today's Britain could be a parallel example of a public good for which the social benefits are not reflected completely in the market price. Economic and long-term environmental imperatives apparently remain at odds. Thus, we find small surprise in words quoted in Rosenthal's conclusion: “Nuisance law has never reflected a concern for environmental protection as such. The primary focus of nuisance law has been to define the rights and limitations to the attaching to the enjoyment of private property” (231). Where “Environmental damage is only relevant in so far as it poses a threat of harm to someone's property interests” (231), it is not hard to understand the origins of NIMBYism and gated communities all over the world. As Rosenthal concludes, perhaps with sad frustration, “History cannot be rerun, only researched.” However, this particular history is ongoing, and we may still benefit to the extent that we learn from past failures and make informed interventions in the present.

Rosenthal is to be congratulated on the depth and extent of his investigations. His passion and meticulous research for the subject is evident. The text is serious, as would be expected of a study on its subject. But as we read Rosenthal's lighter touches in the introduction (for example, “I am ever thankful to my family . . . for their . . . tolerant listening to my ‘tales of the sewers’”) one cannot help but wonder if the rest of the book might have been cast in livelier language. As an architect, I would have appreciated more visual material in the book. There are ten maps, but surely the intrepid Victorians must have left more, such as plans of sewers and drawings of the construction as they took place. We also wonder about the state of these places now: Could the conclusion have taken the future into account, like the chapter on nuisance law, which brings its subject to a twentieth-century context with the Coase theorem and environmental economics? After all, the temporal nature of economics is the key to a comparative study. We also miss tables that a comparative study such as this might have usefully inserted. Sewers and pollution are indeed drab subjects, but providing images, tables, and an immediate context might have lifted this book out of its academic severity and made it more accessible. Such a strategy would have been welcome, as this subject is indeed as relevant today as it was in the Victorian times. Rosenthal's work deserves attention from a broad audience.