The Fabric of Civilization

How Textiles Made the World

De: Virginia I. Postrel

Narrado por: Caroline Cole

Duración: 9 h y 42 m

Resumen del Editor

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.

©2021 Virginia I. Postrel (P)2021 Spotify Audiobooks

Reseñas de la Crítica

“We are taken on a journey as epic, and varying, as the Silk Road itself… [The Fabric of Civilization is] like a swatch of a Florentine Renaissance brocade: carefully woven, the technique precise, the colors a mix of shade and shine and an accurate representation of the whole cloth.”―New York Times

“Expansive… The author is excellent at highlighting how textiles truly changed the world.”―Wall Street Journal

“Textile-making hasn’t gotten enough credit for its own sophistication, and for all the ways it undergirds human technological innovation—an error Virginia Postrel’s erudite and complete book goes a long way toward correcting at last.”―Wired

Wonderfully enlightening

This book provides a riveting history of textiles that one would never have imagined.
The thread of its narrative gives insights into mankind. It’s obvious the author was inspired by the subject matter

Eye-opening re research of future fabrics

Enjoyed the story very much. Quite annoyed that narrator mispronounced treadle and towns of Waltham and Natick Massachusetts, maybe others that I don't recall or didn't know better.

FANTASTIC HISTORY BOOK

LOVED IT!!!!!! GREAT NARRATOR!!! I WILL NEVER TAKE FABRIC FOR GRANTED. AND IT ALL STARTED WITH A PIECE OF STRING.

Remarkably interesting

In my wildest imagination I would never have thought this would be so completely fascinating.

A wonderful read

This has been a wonderful read! As a mathematician, I especially enjoyed all of the mathematical parts, most of all I wasn't aware of. The book only lost me with all of the descriptions of machines which were hard to image for someone outside of the field and, to a non-chemist like me, very detailed chemistry explanations. Which is not a detriment of the book, but it did make me glaze over significant parts of the book.

Also, the narrator, Caroline Cole, was absolutely lovely to listen to, and I would gladly pick up other books narrated by her.

My favorite quote from the book was:
"In more than a decade of classes, Vogelsang-Eastwood says, only two students have solved the puzzle. One was a weaver who already knew the answer, and the other was an engineer. The ancients who invented the warpraising loops, known as heddles, were “geniuses,” she pronounces."

How textiles helped me to grow up.

i was intrigued by the title but upon reading the unfolding narrative I grew beleaguered with details and lack of pictures. Then went to Amazon/Kindle for copy with some illustrations. Audible version still was useful. Sadly a lack of colorful illustrations disqualified the hard copy from covering my coffee table.
This book reminds me of fabrics role in my youth. Dressing up for school.Decking out for the Easter Parade. Keeping up with the latest fashion crazes with peers. The trips to small and big stores for ties, suits and developing personal tastes. Also important were the curtains I helped my mother stretch and hang and later peered through. The book reminded me of my deceased and fashionable sister who sewed her clothes, loaded her closets with fashion statements and providing many squabbles with her sisters borrowing from her stash. That same sister gifted me with fashionable men's clothing.
But eventually I realized how quickly fashion changed and squandered money, often winding up in the "rag bin" or thrift stores.
Thus escaping the hunger for fashion and developed passions for investing hard earned money, education, literacy, art hobbies antiques and beautiful gardens and wife.
So I must credit one fashionable sister for artistic tastes but give myself credit for the once fashionable that in time "grew" in value.
Thus my broad interests in the technical aspects of fabrics is well rewarded by perusing both audible and printed book versions.
Thank the author for reminding me how fashion helped weaved my life.

Excellently woven story;-)

Just another example of the many things we take for granted in our modern society of convenience. Everyone should read this book, to better understand the many blessings that technology and science have bestowed upon us.

Fascinating exploration of overlooked history

This wonderful exploration of the history of textiles from the earliest days of humanity to the present day emphasizes the ubiquity and necessity of fiber and fabric to everyone. Not only are they key for protection and utility, but as a means for technology as a whole to develop, over and over. For a long time, historians and archaeologists overlooked this everyday technology, which is easy enough to do as many of the surviving tools are not immediately obvious and textiles themselves are not well preserved in many environments. This book rectifies some of this oversight, and is both thorough and easy to comprehend.

The narration is excellent in terms of both clarity and actual voice. The narrator sounds involved with the material, which in turn makes it easier to follow. Faced with a multitude of languages and technical terms, her pronunciation is clear and comprehensible.

Engaging history not as thrilled with narrator

I often find nonfiction either boring or too much like memoir. While Postrel lost me when she got up to the innovators section (way too many big boys with their big toys BS for my taste), I found her angle on civilization quite interesting. There were a few times where I thought she was overlooking more influential factors in preference of her textile-centric viewpoint, but not so much as to undermine her thesis.

While I found the narrator to be generally competent with good phrasing, use of pitch, etc. I did find a few things bad enough to make me set it aside several times. First, her pronunciations were…weird. I don’t pretend to know dictionary standard pronunciation for every word (I’d always heard cochineal as cokineel and was surprised to see websters coachineel. She does use websters). Her pronunciations of several scientific terms was off and she was very inconsistent with some non European names of peoples and individuals. (They cant be both Eee-wee and Yew-ay.). Second, she did shift her tone and voice to try to indicate quotes. But it was clear she had only a couple of voices to use. While they were for the most part free of stereotyping or dialect (no Boston accent, even for the guy described by the author as having a strong one). But a lot of her more feminine voices had kind of sing-song intonations which kind of sounded wishy-washy and her masculine ones were often chuffy self satisfied voices. I thought these didn’t serve the text well.

I admit some of the issue with listening rather than reading any book is the repetition of words. Repetition of a crucial word with few correct synonyms is usually not an issue when reading.. When you have to hear someone say textiles or cochineal hundreds or dozens of times respectively it can become grating. I’m pretty understanding about this and try to take it into account, but for folks who might not anticipate it, fair warning.

Great book!!!

Stepped away from my usual reads with this one and it definitely did not disappoint. This is a fantastic book full of history and the origins of textiles. I never knew it could be so interesting.