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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.
"A fascinating history of…[a craft] that preceded and made possible civilization itself." —New York Times Book Review New discoveries about the textile arts reveal women's unexpectedly influential role in ancient societies. Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women. Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture. Elizabeth Wayland Barber has drawn from data gathered by the most sophisticated new archaeological methods—methods she herself helped to fashion. In a "brilliantly original book" (Katha Pollitt, Washington Post Book World), she argues that women were a powerful economic force in the ancient world, with their own industry: fabric.
Today we have greater wealth, health, opportunity, and choice than at any time in history. Yet a chorus of intellectuals and politicians laments our current condition -- as slaves to technology, coarsened by popular culture, and insecure in the face of economic change. The future, they tell us, is dangerously out of control, and unless we precisely govern the forces of change, we risk disaster. In The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel explodes the myths behind these claims. Using examples that range from medicine to fashion, she explores how progress truly occurs and demonstrates that human betterment depends not on conformity to one central vision but on creativity and decentralized, open-ended trial and error. She argues that these two opposing world-views -- "stasis" vs. "dynamism" -- are replacing "left" and "right" to define our cultural and political debate as we enter the next century. In this bold exploration of how civilizations learn, Postrel heralds a fundamental shift in the way we view politics, culture, technology, and society as we face an unknown -- and invigorating -- future.
The inter-war period (1918-1939) is still remembered as a period of mass deprivation - the 'hungry thirties'. But how did this impression emerge? Thousands of conversations about life in the inter-war period - between parents and children around the dinner table; among workmates at the pub - shaped these understandings. In turn, these fed into popular politics. Stories about the embryonic welfare system in the early-twentieth century informed how people felt towards the National Health Service; memories of the Great Depression shaped arguments about state intervention in the economy. Challenging accounts of widespread political disengagement in the twentieth century, Politics of the Past shows how re-telling family stories about the inter-war period offered ordinary people an accessible way of engaging in politics. Drawing on six local case studies across Scotland and England, this book explains how stories about the inter-war working-class experience in industrial areas came to appear commonplace nationwide.
For the first time the complete financial history of Berkshire Hathaway is available under one cover in chronological format. Beginning at the origins of the predecessor companies in the textile industry, the reader can examine the development of the modern-day conglomerate year-by-year and decade-by-decade, watching as the struggling textile company morphs into what it has become today. This comprehensive analysis distils over 10,000 pages of research material, including Buffett’s Chairman’s letters, Berkshire Hathaway annual reports and SEC filings, annual meeting transcripts, subsidiary financials, and more. The analysis of each year is supplemented with Buffett’s own commentary where relevant, and examines all important acquisitions, investments, and other capital allocation decisions. The appendices contain balance sheets, income statements, statements of cash flows, and key ratios dating back to the 1930s, materials brought together for the first time. The structure of the book allows the new student to follow the logic, reasoning, and capital allocation decisions made by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger from the very beginning. Existing Berkshire shareholders and long-time observers will find new information and refreshing analysis, and a convenient reference guide to the decades of financial moves that built the modern-day respected enterprise that is Berkshire Hathaway.
Mexico's revolution of 1910 ushered in a revolutionary era: during the twentieth century, Mexican, Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Iranian revolutions shaped local, regional, and world history. Because Mexico was at the time a rural and agrarian country, it is not surprising that historians have concentrated on the revolution in the countryside where the rural underclass fought for land. This book uncovers a previously unknown workers' revolution within the broader revolution. Working in Mexico's largest factory industry, cotton textile operatives fought their own fight, one that challenged and overthrew the old labor regime and changed the social relations of work. Their struggle created the most progressive labor regime in Latin America, including but not limited to the famous Article 123 of the 1917 Constitution. Revolution within the Revolution analyzes the rules of labor and explains how they became a pillar of the country's political system. Through the rest of the twentieth century, Mexico's land reform and revolutionary labor regime allowed it to avoid the revolution and repression experienced elsewhere in Latin America.
The Book of Majors 2014 by The College Board helps students answer these questions: What's the major for me? Where can I study it? What can I do with it after graduation? Revised and refreshed every year, this book is the most comprehensive guide to college majors on the market. In-depth descriptions of 200 of the most popular majors are followed by complete listings of every major offered at more than 3,800 colleges, including four-year and two-year colleges and technical schools. The 2014 edition covers every college major identified by the U.S. Department of Education—over 1,200 majors are listed in all. This is also the only guide that shows what degree levels each college offers in a major, whether a certificate, associate, bachelor's, master's or doctorate. The guide features: • insights—from the professors themselves—on how each major is taught, what preparation students will need, other majors to consider and much more. • updated information on career options and employment prospects. • the inside scoop on how students can find out if a college offers a strong program for a particular major, what life is like for students studying that major, and what professional societies and accrediting agencies to refer to for more background on the major.