ISBN: 0141979976 9780141979977

Category: History / World

Page count: 640

<p><b>WINNER OF THE 2015 BANCROFT PRIZE </b><br><b>WINNER OF THE 2015 PHILIP TAFT PRIZE</b><br><b>FINALIST FOR THE 2015 PULITZER PRIZE FOR HISTORY</b><br><b>SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 CUNDHILL PRIZE IN HISTORICAL LITERATURE</b><br><b><i>Economist </i>BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015</b><br><br><b>'A masterpiece of the historian's craft' <i>The Nation</i><br></b><br>For about 900 years, from 1000 to 1900, cotton was the world's most important manufacturing industry. It remains a vast business - if all the cotton bales produced in 2013 had been stacked on top of each other they would have made a somewhat unstable tower 40,000 miles high. <br><br>Sven Beckert's superb new book is a history of the overwhelming role played by cotton in dictating the shape of our world. It is both a gripping narrative and a brilliant case history of how the world works.</p>