Customer Reviews

Cotton: The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

purchased this book as a fiber artist wanting to know more. The subject was covered so well with many facets of interest. So well written, moves well, and never boring. Glad it was recommended to me by another fiber artist.

I've got this on my Kindle and I'll re-read it again in the future; it's that interesting! All you ever wanted to know about cotton and more. The comparison about the collapse of the cotton market to the collapse of our car market is compelling, because our economy was affected in both cases in the same way. Our car executives should have read this book years ago; but then, wait, it hadn't been published yet. Interesting enough for the general public, it will be very enlightening to any student of industry and economics. Get a Kindle so you can have this book on hnd when you need it.

was assigned this book for reading for a textitles class before visiting the textile museum in lowell, ma. beginning was slow, but history was interesting...didn't know all this about this simple fiber!

I didn't know that cotton was such an interesting subject until I began reading this book. It was well written and contained so much information.

This is an excellently written and entrancing history. I think its important to know who and what are the movers and shakers in the economy, you can at least try not to step on their toes. Maybe you can even get in on some of the action. In any case, wake up and look around: who is king, probably not you, and cotton is a heavy contender. Others are aluminum, salt, beef, wheat and of course the two biggies - energy and water.

The beginning was kind of slow - it was about how the author grew up in Lowell. Fine but not as interesting as the real meat of the book.

Fascinating book, well written, unfortunately my paperback copy is missing pages 175 to 206. It doubles one chapter, so check when you get your copy. Sophia

This is dramatic history, hidden in the very creases of our jeans. As I kid on a farm, I picked cotton for my cousins and farmer families in the little known cotton kingdom of Florida; Santa Rosa County. The picking machines were just coming into play and school kids were being forced out of a labor niche to go save America from communism in Southeast Asia. We were further displaced to corporate America where few could relate to an ice cold jug of water at the end of a long row of cotton. The machines gained. The successful farmers became family corporate enterprises and bulked up with acreage and machinery. Between cotton and peanuts, the farming businessmen now make very good livings for themselves and many more whom they employ.
This book helped me to spin the story of my own youth into the yarn of America and the world. It should be a movie .. or better yet, a 5 part Discovery Channel series. The history channel is so stuck on war features, it may miss the huge story of war in this book because of its unasuming title. This is a book that every person in the cotton business should read and one that every student of world history and American history should read.
I hope to spread the word in my own blogs from me3tv.com.

This is a great book on what ordinarily would seem to be a boring subject.