Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the
Sanitation Workers of New York City. 

An Evening with Robin Nagle
Anthropologist-in-Residence with
The New York City Department of Sanitation

Thursday, June 23rd at The General Society Library
The lecture starts at 6:30 P.M. – Book-signing and Reception to Follow

The anthropologist Robin Nagle will discuss her book Picking Up and her experiences inside New York City’s Department of Sanitation, a largely unseen and often unloved army responsible for keeping the city clean, healthy and alive. To learn the job first-hand, she was hired as a sanitation worker herself; while loading out trucks and plowing snow, she experienced the physical aches, public abuse, and surprising hazards that are always part of the work. Her insider’s perspective reveals the startling complexity and rich camaraderie of this mostly invisible world.

“The reader comes away with a greater appreciation for trash, the necessary byproduct of our consumer society we spend a great deal of money not to think about. But perhaps more importantly, the reader comes away with a greater admiration and appreciation of the men and women that make their way through Nagle’s pages: the beloved younger garbage man who dies on the job, the prankster who destroys one of the hated public trash bins, the suspicious lunchroom clan, the teacher of new trainees who acquires cult-like status.”
The Atlantic

“With Picking Up, Nagle joins the likes of Jane Jacobs and Jacob Riis, writers with the chutzpah to dig deep into the Rube Goldberg machine we call the Big Apple and emerge with a lyrical, clear-eyed look at how it works.” Mother Jones.

Robin Nagle has been anthropologist-in-residence at New York City’s Department of Sanitation since 2006. She is a clinical professor of anthropology and environmental studies at New York University.

The program begins at 6:30 p.m. in The General Society Library
20 West 44th Street, (Between 5th and 6th Avenues)
New York City.
Reception and Book-Signing to follow. Advance registration is recommended.

$15 General Admission;
$10 General Society Members, New York Landmarks Conservancy Members,
and Senior Citizens;
$5 Students
To register please email the General Society at:
meg.stanton@generalsociety.org

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the
New York City Department of Cultural Affairs,
in partnership with the City Council.