The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World
Virginia Postrel
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World
Virginia Postrel
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
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.