The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World

This book is nothing short of a masterpiece. It combines the analytical mindset of the economic historian with the humanist sensibilities of the art historian, and the social sensitivity of the sociologist. There is not one corner of the human experience left untouched by Virginia Postrel's tour of the fibers, threads, cloth, and dye that go into making textiles, and the complex patterns of global trade that have sprung up to meet the demand for them. Above all, Postrel puts on display our creative impulses, our ceaseless quest to refine and innovate, and the universal human desire, even in the depths of historic poverty, for more than mere survival. From craftmanship to mathematics to computation, Postrel's prose makes difficult topics accessible and accessible topics extra enjoyable. This book will challenge you but it will also provide a short, fun read. Highly recommended.

This was not the book I expected, but I loved it all the same. I had wondered how it was that textiles evolved--how we went from creatures covering--and adorning--our bodies with animal skins to beings who wove our garments from growing things. Instead, I was treated to a carefully-constructed argument, meticulously researched across human history and with references to a great variety of cultures, about how our ancestors--and even now our peers--attempts to improve those fabrics that adorn us influenced other technologies and so advanced civilization. Postrel starts with the various components of converting plant fiber into human clothing: carding and spinning, weaving, and dyeing, and then finally to commerce and innovation. The stuff can get technical at times--during the writing, she set up a loom in her office so as to experience the process of weaving--but it all serves her argument. It was a process of millennia to improve from the time-consuming process of the first woven garments to the abundance of clothing cluttering our closets today. "We suffer," Postrel observes in her Afterword, "textile amnesia because we enjoy textile abundance." Indeed. When I was moving last month from an apartment to a house and sorting through my closet, taking the unneeded garments to Goodwill where I saw a superabundance of donations. And that just on one day. At one location. In one city. In this the first book to arrive at my new house, I reflected back on what I saw and wondered how many hours of labor it would have taken to craft those garments at different stages in human history. Textile technology has evolved since humans first realized they could spin fibers from growing things into clothing. In this book, Virginia Postrel tells that story. Well worth your time.

Even with several advanced degrees, this is complex. As the author suggests, unless you weave, you will not be able to understand many of the details about the techniques described. Similarly, advanced chemistry is helpful. A friend with a PHD in agronomy provided the attitude needed to fully appreciate the ideas about plant research. An MBA is useful for understanding the financial discussions. Nevertheless, the book is a wonderful collection of information, ideas, and history which I've never seen before. The only link that was missing is mention of the spice trade which is usually mentioned as one of the prime ingredients of trade over the last several thousand years.

This is a highly readable history of the most widely used fibers (linen, wool, cotton, silk), production processes, & economics going back to their beginning (including Neanderthal spinning). I have studied textile production and this is a one of the more informative books I have encountered.

Humans have co-evolved with our textiles more than with any other technology. The very first computers were looms! So the story of discovering fibers, learning to spin and weave and dye them, figuring out (two centuries before the modern computer) how to create digital algorithms to mass produce them, inventing synthetic materials with all kinds of versatile properties, and now turning 3D knitting into a tool that will rival if not surpass 3D printing--it's hard to imagine a better way to tell the story of 6,000 years of human history. In this book, the author more than rises to the challenge of explaining the many textile breakthroughs which made today's society and economy possible, and she weaves in (pun intended) captivating portraits of people and places ancient and modern. This is technology history at its best, the kind which left me feeling not only better informed about the world but embarrassed to have taken so much astonishing ingenuity for granted. The book gallops along at a fast clip and the writing is clear and vivacious. It made me see everyday life in a new light. Not to be missed.

Virginia Postrel has not only articulated, but documented and elaborated on what all modern weavers (and spinners) feel every time they sit at the loom — that we are joining predecessors from thousands of years of textile production. This isn’t woman’s work or man’s work, it’s the product of human beings evolving and learning and creating new systems whose development continues to this day. Any fabric or textile lover — knitter, fashionista, hand worker, quilter, weaver, spinner-- will love this book as will most students of prehistory, history, and archeology.

I am a seamstress and a knitter and have a history of textile in my family history, having relatives from UK with the last name of Mercer (meaning a merchant of textiles), so I was excited and curious to see what this book was all about. It certainly was informative on textiles in great detail. I loved the history of the weaving and manufacturing of thread and spinning of it. All very festinating. But some later information past the story of spinning and making of the threads used in weaving, became tedious to me and I skipped ahead several times. So for that reason I gave it 3 stars instead of 5. I thought she should have spent more time talking about the silk roads. I. have another book called. The Silk Road, a history of the world. So I read a festinating account of the silk roads, which would have been a great addition to this book at the beginning, especially for anyone who hasn't read the afore mentioned book. All subject to individual taste in reading, of course, as some others may not skip any part and read every page. Just saying....

I had often suspected that there was an undercurrent story to Western Civilization since about 500BCE, which we had not been told. Here it is! As the author notes, from our birth until after our death, fabric and textiles are a major part of our lives. As you read this, you are likely wearing, or are enveloped in (or both!) textiles. And the true story of textiles in Western Civilization is that, for the middleman (or middlewoman) there was incredible financial profit to be realized. The wealth that spawned the modern world was in large part derived directly from the commerce of textiles, and some of our Wall Street banks are based in this profit. It changes our entire understanding of the last 500 years of cultural development.

I haven't read a book in a long time that opened my eyes to so many things. My husband gave it to me for Christmas because of my interest in textiles and my hobbies of garment sewing and quilting. Ms. Postrel opens the whole world to you in this book. Yes, there are a lot of footnotes, but they are at the end and don't interfere in your reading. It is very descriptive, giving more information than some people want. I read through it anyway. It is well written and easy to read. Don't let the reviews that say it is "too scholarly" turn you off.

I heard Virginia Postrel on a podcast and was curious, so I got the book. I'm glad I did. It's an eye opening book, particularly regarding how much time it took our ancestors to clothe themselves. I think this should be rereading for all politicians, all college students, and all humanities professors. Postrel's comment about "textile amnesia" was spot on. I highly recommend this book.

This book is nothing short of a masterpiece. It combines the analytical mindset of the economic historian with the humanist sensibilities of the art historian, and the social sensitivity of the sociologist. There is not one corner of the human experience left untouched by Virginia Postrel's tour of the fibers, threads, cloth, and dye that go into making textiles, and the complex patterns of global trade that have sprung up to meet the demand for them. Above all, Postrel puts on display our creative impulses, our ceaseless quest to refine and innovate, and the universal human desire, even in the depths of historic poverty, for more than mere survival. From craftmanship to mathematics to computation, Postrel's prose makes difficult topics accessible and accessible topics extra enjoyable. This book will challenge you but it will also provide a short, fun read. Highly recommended.

This was not the book I expected, but I loved it all the same. I had wondered how it was that textiles evolved--how we went from creatures covering--and adorning--our bodies with animal skins to beings who wove our garments from growing things. Instead, I was treated to a carefully-constructed argument, meticulously researched across human history and with references to a great variety of cultures, about how our ancestors--and even now our peers--attempts to improve those fabrics that adorn us influenced other technologies and so advanced civilization. Postrel starts with the various components of converting plant fiber into human clothing: carding and spinning, weaving, and dyeing, and then finally to commerce and innovation. The stuff can get technical at times--during the writing, she set up a loom in her office so as to experience the process of weaving--but it all serves her argument. It was a process of millennia to improve from the time-consuming process of the first woven garments to the abundance of clothing cluttering our closets today. "We suffer," Postrel observes in her Afterword, "textile amnesia because we enjoy textile abundance." Indeed. When I was moving last month from an apartment to a house and sorting through my closet, taking the unneeded garments to Goodwill where I saw a superabundance of donations. And that just on one day. At one location. In one city. In this the first book to arrive at my new house, I reflected back on what I saw and wondered how many hours of labor it would have taken to craft those garments at different stages in human history. Textile technology has evolved since humans first realized they could spin fibers from growing things into clothing. In this book, Virginia Postrel tells that story. Well worth your time.

Even with several advanced degrees, this is complex. As the author suggests, unless you weave, you will not be able to understand many of the details about the techniques described. Similarly, advanced chemistry is helpful. A friend with a PHD in agronomy provided the attitude needed to fully appreciate the ideas about plant research. An MBA is useful for understanding the financial discussions. Nevertheless, the book is a wonderful collection of information, ideas, and history which I've never seen before. The only link that was missing is mention of the spice trade which is usually mentioned as one of the prime ingredients of trade over the last several thousand years.

This is a highly readable history of the most widely used fibers (linen, wool, cotton, silk), production processes, & economics going back to their beginning (including Neanderthal spinning). I have studied textile production and this is a one of the more informative books I have encountered.

Humans have co-evolved with our textiles more than with any other technology. The very first computers were looms! So the story of discovering fibers, learning to spin and weave and dye them, figuring out (two centuries before the modern computer) how to create digital algorithms to mass produce them, inventing synthetic materials with all kinds of versatile properties, and now turning 3D knitting into a tool that will rival if not surpass 3D printing--it's hard to imagine a better way to tell the story of 6,000 years of human history. In this book, the author more than rises to the challenge of explaining the many textile breakthroughs which made today's society and economy possible, and she weaves in (pun intended) captivating portraits of people and places ancient and modern. This is technology history at its best, the kind which left me feeling not only better informed about the world but embarrassed to have taken so much astonishing ingenuity for granted. The book gallops along at a fast clip and the writing is clear and vivacious. It made me see everyday life in a new light. Not to be missed.

Virginia Postrel has not only articulated, but documented and elaborated on what all modern weavers (and spinners) feel every time they sit at the loom — that we are joining predecessors from thousands of years of textile production. This isn’t woman’s work or man’s work, it’s the product of human beings evolving and learning and creating new systems whose development continues to this day. Any fabric or textile lover — knitter, fashionista, hand worker, quilter, weaver, spinner-- will love this book as will most students of prehistory, history, and archeology.

I am a seamstress and a knitter and have a history of textile in my family history, having relatives from UK with the last name of Mercer (meaning a merchant of textiles), so I was excited and curious to see what this book was all about. It certainly was informative on textiles in great detail. I loved the history of the weaving and manufacturing of thread and spinning of it. All very festinating. But some later information past the story of spinning and making of the threads used in weaving, became tedious to me and I skipped ahead several times. So for that reason I gave it 3 stars instead of 5. I thought she should have spent more time talking about the silk roads. I. have another book called. The Silk Road, a history of the world. So I read a festinating account of the silk roads, which would have been a great addition to this book at the beginning, especially for anyone who hasn't read the afore mentioned book. All subject to individual taste in reading, of course, as some others may not skip any part and read every page. Just saying....

I had often suspected that there was an undercurrent story to Western Civilization since about 500BCE, which we had not been told. Here it is! As the author notes, from our birth until after our death, fabric and textiles are a major part of our lives. As you read this, you are likely wearing, or are enveloped in (or both!) textiles. And the true story of textiles in Western Civilization is that, for the middleman (or middlewoman) there was incredible financial profit to be realized. The wealth that spawned the modern world was in large part derived directly from the commerce of textiles, and some of our Wall Street banks are based in this profit. It changes our entire understanding of the last 500 years of cultural development.

I haven't read a book in a long time that opened my eyes to so many things. My husband gave it to me for Christmas because of my interest in textiles and my hobbies of garment sewing and quilting. Ms. Postrel opens the whole world to you in this book. Yes, there are a lot of footnotes, but they are at the end and don't interfere in your reading. It is very descriptive, giving more information than some people want. I read through it anyway. It is well written and easy to read. Don't let the reviews that say it is "too scholarly" turn you off.

I heard Virginia Postrel on a podcast and was curious, so I got the book. I'm glad I did. It's an eye opening book, particularly regarding how much time it took our ancestors to clothe themselves. I think this should be rereading for all politicians, all college students, and all humanities professors. Postrel's comment about "textile amnesia" was spot on. I highly recommend this book.

This was a first! My husband and I gave each other this same book for Christmas! But that’s a good thing because we can read at our own speeds. Ms Postrel did all the heavy researching, you get all the fun. But if you want more depth, her footnotes are very helpful. Gems I have learned ( without too many spoilers) Neanderthals made string. Women were literate in 19000BCE Assyria. (Well it wasn’t Assyria yet). You can get the pattern for stockings from the 1560’s on Ravelry. So my spouse does not work in textiles but I knit and sew and know a little about weaving, and we are both loving this book!

Well-organized thematically: fiber-thread-cloth-dye-traders-customers-innovators. Well-documented with nearly 30 pages of end-note citations. Has excellent glossary and index. Loads of interesting details, well-written and well-connected. An information-geek's treasure-trove. The chapter on cloth got a bit overboard on the math connections, making some that were a bit of a stretch. But at the same time she made a good case for a lot more than I would have expected, and it does provide a surprising motivation for the arithmetic section of Euclid's Elements (as a teacher certified in math among other things, I liked that a lot) Only real nocks I'd give it is the font is rather light and thin so I needed to read in good light, and the B&W pictures really don't give the images if you look them up on line or have seen them in person justice.

Expecting an overview of a narrow, “niche” topic, I was quite surprised at the vast significance of fabric to the history of mankind. Textiles are so woven (no pun) into everyday existence, that it is easily overlooked for the fundamentally important technology that it is, and which by the way, pre-dates agriculture. Prehistoric string, rope, twine, netting, baggage, clothing, etc. Not only precede the stone age (which required such in order to craft stone age tools), but are so ubiquitous as to be overlooked in their historical importance in the evolution of human trade and technology – until this book. I literally learned something new on every page. For example, the first “wheel” invented by man was a spindle for weaving, rather than a load-bearing item. Our very language teams with phraseology derived from the process of weaving. There are nuggets on the processes and technology of fabric, various techniques of production, sources, (cotton, silk, flax, synthetics), dying and coloring, trade, and recent innovations. The book is well written, moves along at a comfortable pace (erudite but not at all pedantic), is richly illustrated and includes extensive biographical notes. Very happy to have added this layer of historical and technical understanding…a perfect gift for the armchair scholar.

This book was totally fascinating with all the information it gave. You read through it and see names you recognize from other areas and are amazed that they had something to do with fabric in one way or another. Pasteur comes up in connection with silk worms (who knew). If you love history, love finding out new things, or finding out all about fabric you should enjoy this book. I breezed through this book and enjoy every minute of it.

Superbly written, the Fabric of Civilization tells the story of what the author calls “textile amnesia.” We fail to appreciate what is literally surrounding us throughout our lives, clothes, sheets, blankets. This comes at a price - the ignorance of not knowing the incredible challenges that were solved sometimes in small incremental steps over millennia that resulted in the world we live in today.

Loved this book. It is well written, the author has a dry sense of humor, her facts are solid, and her research appears to have been extensive. Ms. Postrel is not an archaeologist (though she learned to weave along the way), but something piqued her interest, and she set off on a search, and a fine and interesting search it turned out to be. I usually flag when books such as this get to modern man-made fabrics (my particular interest is medieval fabrics and how they were created/re-creating them), but she made even that interesting, and revealed a couple of really new ones I'd nver heard of. All told, well worth the time to read it if the subject interests you at all.

As an avid reader of history and a long-term devotee of textiles, I expected to enjoy this book very much. Sadly, the level of technical detail left me lost, and bored. I abandoned ship midway. For someone with more technical tolerance, and/or a higher boredom frontier, it's probably a great read.

Bought as a gift for my mom. She loves history and has a degree in textiles. She reports that it is an amazing read and she can’t put it down!

I liked the historic look back, across continents and cultures, right up to today. The thought that the stone ax worked because of thread was fascinating. Excellent read, well broken down by chapters.

What a read! It covers everything from the economy to politics and everything in between. I couldn't put it down. I am into fabric, but I think this book is a great read for anyone looking to know a little about this crazy, wonderful world we live in. I am a more educated, enlightened individual for having read it.

Outstanding story of the development of the Individual technologies that have come together through human history to create the textiles we have today and the importance of those technologies in the advancement of others we benefit from on a daily basis. Very interesting read, organized in an effective way.

The book is packed with intriguing information about a variety of textiles, but it's somewhat dry. I would have enjoyed a a more human touch--a little more about how the textiles affected everyday people's lives. I expected a more exciting or enchanting perspective.

An incredible look into a critical, foundational, technology that most of us overlook. I’ve always loved Virginia Postrels work, and she did not disappoint here. You will never look at cloth the same after this.

Absolutely fascinating and intensely researched, for craft I ,took up as a lark in the 70s, joined a guild where I was the youngest amongst women in their 60s who had knowledge beyond myself. This book fulfilled my love of the craft into a three dimensional world of history I had not considered. Weaving is a process from planning to create a fabric, Postrel filled in the spaces i didn't know existed, with cultural and historical depth. Wow

I was anticipating more of an art book about world textiles. This is not. The limited number of black and white photos and diagrams are, probably, adequate for a textbook. The book does appear to cover textiles from around the world, so if you're looking for something more scholastic, this might be a good choice.

As an avid reader of history, this book adds value to something and some people that we take for granted in how they helped to knit together certain moments in history. A beautiful book written in an approachable manner for the layman. As someone trained in political economy, this book opens another dimension in how economic history was shaped.

I love the history of our technology, and this is one of those that is startling. Fabric is literally the fabric of civilization, and yet we take it for granted. Well written, very interesting and informative, with plenty to make you go hmmmm.

Haven’t read the book but flipped thru and it looked great

Thus us an excellent snd very readable book if research it the development of The Fabrics of Civilization. Well researched and well written

Interesting read. Well written.

I was disappointed in the book but I may have misunderstood the summarization. I was hoping it would delve more into how textiles effected history but it mainly just got into the different phases of textiles. Sorry.

I'm not yet finished but wanted to start a review - this book is a wonderful read that includes marvelous details but doesn't get too technical. Highly recommended.

This book is fantastic! It combines my two passions of Science and Clothing. I really highly recommend it. There are a few pictures as well but mainly text.

The book provides a window into the history of fibers, and shows how profoundly the textile trade has affected the development of nations. It also whets one's appetite for the next generation of fiber technology.

This book weaves together science, economics, culture and history all with the common thread of fabric. Each chapter examines the history and the current cutting edge of an aspect of textiles (e.g. dye, thread, etc.). Some parts were slow but mostly very interesting. This book sheds light on a topic that affects everyone yet few think about in our daily lives.

Postrel brings the genius of innovation to life in this beautifully written and researched tableau.

Interesting, well done book.

Gave this as a gift and he enjoyed reading it.

Got this for my boss who was retiring. She love history, weaving, fabrics and travel. She was very excited to receive this and should be a good read.

Just and accumulation of a bunch of facts, very boring so far

It was a gift

Thanks to NetGalley and Basic Books for the chance to read an advance copy of this book! I really enjoyed this adventure through time and space to explore the ways that fabric and textiles shaped our history. While I sometimes had some trouble following the structure of the narrative, I learned so much and appreciated the illustrations and photographs scattered throughout the chapters. This book is structured on seven wide-ranging chapters. The first four focus on aspects of textiles--fiber, thread, cloth, and dye--while the last three focus on the people interacting with them--traders, consumers, and innovators. This thematic approach helps tie together examples from across the globe and the centuries, though I sometimes got lost within the chapters as the section breaks were not labeled. Throughout this book you'll meet all kinds of colorful characters, from the Assyrian woman who wrote her husband a sarcastic cuneiform note about textile orders 4000 years ago, to the man who stole a cotton plant from Mexico and changed US history, to the startups innovating fabric technology today. My favorite chapters were Cloth, a process-oriented discussion of weaving and knitting which really engaged me since I crochet, and Dye, a smelly adventure from ancient Rome to modern-day California exploring just how hard (and odorous) it is to get color onto fabric. But every chapter has fascinating tidbits. You'll learn what fabric has to do with: ancient Greek arithmetic, Machiavelli's math lessons, and the origins of computers, just to note a few. This is actually the second history of fabric I have read this year, not something necessarily I expected to happen but I'm delighted that I ran across both books. THE FABRIC OF CIVILIZATION is jam-packed with information and research but you can tell there's so much more to learn.

Author attempts an entirely bogus case that fabric design has a fundamental relationship with Mathematics. A mathmatician can look at patterns and subsequently "reverse engineer" a math-expression that in a very left-handed way repeats that pattern. BUT NO WEAVER has EVER...EVER....generated a pattern FROM a math expression. A WEAVER manipulates a 'world' of "X" Warp (s) and "X" Woofs....it is a world of "spatial imagination".....limited by machine-design. SO the author's voluminouus digression into a claimed BASIS of math in weaving is lagubriously false and irrelevent. Add-to-that, this book does not sufficiently describe weaves more complex than "plain-weave"....at a level of detail that would enable a reader to visualize the technique....much-less repeat it. This book is worthless....compared to the information that WIKIPEDIA will and does provide to successive "intelligently-composed" queries. Beyond Wikipedia , general I-Net queries get one further than anything this Author provides. For example, suppose you wished to self-tutor by simply weaving a three-layrope. This author does not tell you that all lays INDIVIDUALLY. have the same direction of twist... and that that direction is again repeated when "laying" the rope-strands. Reading tthis Author.....doesn't GET you anything concrete.

The Fabric of Civilization is an absolutely fascinating deep dive in just how interwoven the history of textiles is with the History of Humanity.. From our language to our culture, this books weaves together several threads to show just how entwined everything is. I mean, look at the previous paragraph. Look at the words that have relationships to textiles. There's a lot. The book covers a wide range of things and doesn't shy away from the ugly side of history. The fact that people were enslaved and killed for things like cotton, silk, and dyes. I also appreciated that cultures outside of Europe were featured and their contributions recognized. It's nice to see something that isn't fully Eurocentric when discussing something that really is quite global. There's lots of interesting tidbits in this. Like the fact that a lot of modern germ theory came out of trying to save silkworms from disease. Frankly this was a fascinating read and one of the best non-fiction books I've read this year. Five stars.

In The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, Virginia Postrel takes the reader on a far-flung journey through time and geography as she offers up an often fascinating history of the element of the textile technology (and make no mistake, it’s as much a technology as cars and computers are, with even, as she details, a claim to helping jumpstart the latter). The book is divided into the various threads that make up the whole cloth (see what I did there?): Fiber, Thread, Cloth, Dye, Traders, Consumers, Innovators. In those chapters we zip back and forth in time and place, beginning in paleolithic times with the simple concept of “string,” Before you can roll your eyes, though, Postrel informs you that the “Stone Age” could just as easily be called the “String Age,” given that: string is a general-purpose technology with countless applications. With it, early humans could create fishing lines and nets, bows for hunting or starting fires, set traps for small game, strap babies to their chests . . . sew together hides. It gave early hunter-gatherers more control over their environment. Its invention was a fundamental step toward civilization. Take that, all you flint knappers and stone lovers! After this basic move, we drop in on the domestication of sheep for wool, the cultivation and selective breeding of plants such as flax and cotton (the latter’s spread greatly aided by Muslim conquest) and of worms for silk. We see the invention of the cotton gin, the spinning jenny, the power loom and Jacquard’s punch card loom that famously inspired Babbage’s Analytical Engine, often cited as a precursor to the computer and algorithms, We learn how much yarn and time it took to outfit a Roman in a toga or a Viking fleet in sail and how all that fabric was dyed by boiling plants, mashing up insects, or mixing chemicals. In more contemporary times, we see how knitwear took over from woven wear and how synthetic fibers were discovered, proliferated, and then explore where they might go into the future (think super breathable, super-wicking, and able to channel power). We travel through most of the continents (not a lot of fabric-work being done in Antarctica), stopping in for some extended visits in China, Italy, Germany, the American South, the Mongolian Steppe, Ghana, and other locales. Some readers might know some parts of this story — the synthesis of mauve as a dye, the creation of nylon, how nails were used to create Tyrian purple, but it gives you a greater sense of context and unity to see it all in one place. As well, one gets a greater sense of human ingenuity in how we’ve manipulated first natural sources (sheep, wild cotton, etc.) and then basic elements and molecules to clothes ourselves, express ourselves, and then perform feats that go way beyond what we usually consider the realm of “fabric.” Postrel does a nice job of finding the human center in many of these stories, and my favorite parts were often where she herself was involved or did the interviewing of those who were. It’s times like those one gets great lines like this, about a dye: “It’s got a lot of rotten, some fecal notes, a lot of urine in there. It’s got it all.” I wouldn’t have minded a bit more here and there on some topics, maybe some more of the personal, a bit more on the jealous guarding of secrets (the Chinese and how to make silk for instance), and something on the admittedly more negative areas of sweatshops and the destruction of industries. But those were minor quibbles. All in all this is always informative and most of the time fascinating. A good combination for any non-fiction work.

"The Fabric of Civilization" is a history about the far-reaching influence that textiles have had on the world. The author looked into aspects of fabric production, selling, and use that I have not seen covered in other histories about textiles. Overall, this was an interesting read, and I'd recommend it to those interested in this topic. The author talked about how cotton, silk, wool, and flax were used to make fabrics very early on and how people improved the plants' and animals' production and quality of fiber through selective breeding and other practices. The first person to come up with the germ theory did so because he was working on curing a disease affecting silkworms. The next chapter covered spinning technologies, starting with the drop spindle and moving on to the spindle wheel, spinning jenny, and other factory machines. The third chapter covered weaving and how advanced math may have been developed by weavers creating complicated patterns, how physical codes for patterns were created in different cultures, the history of weaving patterns like brocade, and information about knitting machines. The fourth chapter covered dying fabric and the developments in chemistry created by the demand for certain colors, from the original plant- and animal-based dyes to the synthetic dye development. The fifth chapter covered fabric merchants and how they developed things like accounting, using cloth as money, bills of exchange, and more. The sixth chapter covered how the demand for various fabrics influenced what was made and how some countries forbade certain fabrics or fashions. The last chapter covered modern innovations, from new types of synthetic thread to coatings that can be put on cloth to prevent stains and such. I received an ebook review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.

I enjoyed this book. The subject material was much broader than I expected. There was a discussion of international trade, history, and chemistry. And it was all discussed with a conversational tone. I did think that there was sometimes too much discussion of actual weaving and heddles and the like. I didn’t really start to love the book until Chapter Four on dyes, but from this chapter on, the book was excellent. Overall this book is well worth reading. Disclosure: I received a complimentary advance reader copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.

Postrel weaves the warp of the ancient with the weft of today in a highly enjoyable, forward-looking narrative of human ingenuity (and related incentives) over the centuries. The story of textiles is the story of discovery and technology, of craft and science, but also of consumers and finance, of forbidden commerce and royal decrees the populace ignores. Most surprising, the threads of this narrative reveal a materiality we thought we understood but have not really seen, until now. If not an apology, the book is nonetheless a solid, balanced account of the human creation called civilization.

I bought this book out of general interest in the subject. I'm a scientist and a history buff, but don't work in textiles nor is it my hobby. For someone like me, this book assumed too much background knowledge, including too many instruments that were not described and too many techniques I had to look up online. The book also needs a good editor -- it is repetitive in parts, without clear connection between sections, and (as I noted above) missing context for those who aren't in the field. All in all I learned a few titbits here and there, but I was hoping for more.

This book has it all. Virginia Postrel superbly condenses the rich history of textiles in this fascinating story. The innovation of textiles is a microcosm for human ingenuity and progress. The fundamental principles of experiment and error are the same across all fields, followed by the increase in knowledge of the science and improved precision to levels previously unimaginable. This story includes technology, innovation, discovery, economics, government policy, and the rise and fall of empires. I am not familiar with the details of fabrics, but the author provides various descriptions of the materials and processes. There is also a glossary of terms in the back that is helpful. With a few stops for quick outside google or youtube videos, I was able to follow along with all of the intricacies involved. This is a unique and original story and I was pleasantly surprised at how entertaining it was. Postrel proves the overriding importance of textiles and how their growth has mirrored the advancement of civilization. Highly recommend.

I know a lot about trade routes and the modern textile industry, because of that i get a lot of insight into the history of the industry. I admit I often just assume it is corporate or local propaganda, this book gets to the basics in a fun and engaging way without the BS quotient. It gives you a nice entry for further research into the areas you really want to look at. Honestly, if I was still teaching a class on this, i would probably use it as a textbook for a Junior level class.

Well-written history of textile fabrication and production, covering archeaology, economics, global trade and commerce and yes, science,. It's rare to find such a readable and enjoyable book! Many thanks to the author.

Very informative about the actions, causes and effects of society as well as those in power on textiles and normal day to day living. We should know history to keep us from repeating mistakes and importantly not try to rewrite it to justify today's point of view.

I read through really quickly. So much I did not know. I love fabric, adore looking at old samples at the V&A and recommend this book to anyone who loves fabric and or social history. First class.

Just started reading very interesting but I am a knitter weaver so am keen to know the history of textiles