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From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, explore the global history of textiles and the world they weave together in this enthralling and educational guide.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. Read more
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Top Amazon Reviews
Remember the Greek legend of Theseus and the Minotaur? King Minos of Crete has compelled Athens to supply a regular stream of sacrificial victims to a Minotaur living in a labyrinth. Athenian hero Theseus decides to put a halt to the slaughter. He volunteers as a sacrifice, smuggles a sword into the maze, and chops off the monster’s head. Still, Theseus would never have escaped the labyrinth without the aid of his (doomed) lover Ariadne, who supplies him a ball of string with which he marks his path into the maze — which becomes his path out of the maze, as well, together with the Athenians he came to rescue. Not all heroes wield blades. And many problems cannot be solved simply by hacking away at them. Their causes are complex and interconnected. They twist and turn. They are fabrics that must be unraveled, patiently and prudently, to be understood. Often, solutions come from following seemingly small threads in unexpected directions, and weaving them into something new. In her masterful new book “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World,” Virginia Postrel serves as her readers’ Ariadne — guiding them through millennia of human experience to discover fresh and illuminating insights about how cultures and economies form, how innovation occurs, and how elites and interest groups often try to inhibit that innovation in order to preserve their power and position. As Postrel points out, our thinking about social and technological change is warped by the materials that happen to survive to be studied. Scholars name historical ages after rocks and metals. Archaeologists sift through mounds of pottery shards. Textiles, which make so much of civilization possible, largely disintegrate and fade from view. In “The Fabric of Civilization,” Postrel makes the unseen visible again. “What we usually call the Stone Age could just as easily be called the String Age,” she points out. “The two prehistoric technologies were literally intertwined.” Speaking of being warped, that word was itself derived from making textiles. Imagine a weaver’s loom. The warp is the yarn stretched lengthwise across it. The weft is the yarn woven over and under the warp to create the fabric. In the process, the warp is pulled and bent, which is how the word took on a new meaning. Postrel works the metaphor throughout “The Fabric of Civilization.” Stretched across her writer’s loom are fascinating chapter yarns about the origins of fiber, the spinning of thread, the weaving and dying of cloth, and the rise of traders, consumers, and innovators whose talents and choices helped create our modern world. I found the chapter on dyes especially revealing. In our clothes, tools, and furnishings, we’ve always cared about more than just functionality. We relish texture and color. We use them to express ideas or signal status. “Dyes bear witness to the universal human quest to imbue artifacts with beauty and meaning — and to the chemical ingenuity and economic enterprise that desire calls forth,” she writes, adding that to a surprisingly large extent “the history of dyes is the history of chemistry.” The connection between the textile trade and scientific progress is one of the intellectual wefts readers will discover woven throughout the chapters of the book. Another is abuse of power. Whether it is the use of slaves or other exploited workers to produce fiber on a massive scale, the use of government regulation to suppress imported fabrics, or the use of violence to destroy labor-saving machines, the story of textiles features a plot full of villainous characters. But it also features many heroes, following more Ariadne’s pattern than that of Theseus. Postrel’s book chronicles “the achievements of inventors, artists, and laborers, the longings of scientists and consumers, the initiative of explorers and entrepreneurs.” These heroes came in every color, espousing every creed, from every corner of the earth. They pursued their own ends. Although there was no concerted design, a pattern emerged. It was the very fabric of civilization itself, “a tapestry woven from countless brilliant threads.”
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Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2021 by John Hood
Format: Paperback
One of the best books I’ve read and one of the few I’m eager to read again. It’s a masterclass in expository writing in addition to giving the reader novel historical insights.
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2025 by MT57
I’m weird; I love reading anything historical: textiles making, fabric dyeing, making and imbibing alcohol, mining salt, the evolution of spoken and written language…you name it, I’ll read it! This was such a beautifully written, in depth dive into textiles, that I sent it to one of my sisters and bought another copy for the other sister. They loved it as much as I.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2025 by Sharon
Format: Kindle
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.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2020 by Tom
Format: Paperback
What an interesting find. Husband read too and now daughter. Things we never knew we didn’t know.
Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2025 by C. P. Thomas
Format: Kindle
Far more interesting than it has any right to be. Mind bogglingly so. Read it and you’ll never look at fabric, or even thread the same.
Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2025 by Mark Van Over
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.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2021 by Walter Cuje