Menu
Next in the queue
60
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
69/100Critics
17/100Scholars
93/100Author:
Virginia Postrel
Publisher:
Basic Books
Date:
November 10, 2020
Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history of textiles and fabrics. 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
What The Reviewers Say
Postrel specializes in sharp, informed commentary on broad subjects. So it’s a surprise to find very little opinion in The Fabric of Civilization. Instead, the book is, as she puts it, an 'exploration originated in wonder'. She isn’t kidding. We are taken on a journey as epic, and varying, as the Silk Road itself.
Each of the book’s chapters is strung on the warp fabric production. Chapter One treats fibers, like cotton, silk and wool; chapter two, thread, chapter three, cloth; wrapping up with the market and the consumer. Sometimes the author loses the thread, so to speak, as when she details the emergence of bills of discount and the origins of Lehman Brothers as underpinning the market for fabrics. Since fabrics were the biggest commercial items of trade and industry for centuries, it is not surprising to see the association with modern credit and money, but it doesn’t tell us anything new. Postrel is best at teasing out the whimsy of an archaeologist who decides to make her own Tyrian purple dye from the murex mollusk or the mathematician who reads Euclid’s Mathematica as a guide to weaving.
... fascinating and wide-ranging.
