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From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, a global history of textiles and the world they made The story of humanity is the story of textiles -- as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code. Assiduously researched and deftly narrated, The Fabric of Civilization tells the story of the world's most influential commodity.
Reviews with the most likes.
Fascinating History. Postrel does a remarkable job of looking at the various people and technologies of making (primarily clothing) textiles throughout history and even into the future. She largely centers around the various types of entities involved in the work, from the source materials to the weavers to the sellers and a few other types, and shows how each contributed in some way to the overall history and to where we are now. Several tidbits I didn't know, including just how much cotton yarn is in an average pair of jeans, and a few that sound plausible, but which I'd need to research a bit more (such as claims about textiles being an early form of computing). At least one passage in particular actually brought to mind the James McAvoy / Angelina Jolie / Morgan Freeman movie Wanted, where looms and weaving play a central part in the mythos. Very much recommended.
This is such a superb read. How cotton was introduced in the world to different materials used in the textile industry and how the development and creating hybrids and different techniques used from history to geography and scientific aspects are covered about the humankind and how they evolved with this industry. I really loved the concept of math used for patterns explained and how the banking system was introduced, the innovations in textile, how a project that gave other results helped in the dying industry and how colonization and everything are interlinked.
This is a book on how human civilization and the clothing industry developed together and how the innovation made changes and improved the way of understanding and quality of the clothing.
The narration was so good. The author has researched a lot and made a great effort to make this book on fabrics and civilizations. Each chapter was on each thing related to the clothing industry from fabrics, dying, innovation, ...
I got a lot of information about the clothing industry and many more things.
Much like the book about colour and paint, that I recently read, I very much enjoyed this.
- textile changed the world and was a catalyst for trade and society. Spent a lot of time reflecting on the Systems and significance on a few long walks around the lake.
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