What comes to your mind if you were to think of a book that is fascinating to the extent that you can’t put it down and read it in one go? A book that has an interesting storyline? One that is spiced up with references you could actually use in your research? And examples for your teaching? That reads like a novel?
Any suggestions? No? Now what about this, a book about containers. Something the author himself calls “[a] soulless aluminum or steel box held together with welds and rivets, with a wooden floor and two enormous doors at one end: the standard container has all the romance of a tin can“. This is not a misprint, rather, me being surprised how you can write such a fascinating piece on “the box” (which is actually the title of the book). Popular science meeting SCM. And I say SCM because of the links Marc Levinson makes between containerisation and globalisation, enabling first international trade, then global supply chains – where transportation costs can almost be neglected. It links a number of disciplines, from transportation to macro-economics, transport geography to economic geography, political economics and industrial relations – just and only via one innovation and how it changed the world. Obviously, “[t]he value of this utilitarian object lies not in what it is, but in how it is used.”
There are lots of reviews of the book to be found, including interviews with the author, essays putting it into perspective – but I can only recommend to read the book itself.
Gyöngyi
PS. Thanks to Marianne Jahre for recommending the book!
Just found out that the book inspired a BBC documentary that followed a container around the world for a year. Here is the final article with “lessons learned” as well.