A review by jocelynw
Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert

2.0

I so wanted to love this. It certainly does lay out how cotton has its tendrils in everything, from the Industrial Revolution to the present day. It was worth struggling with to glean that. It's comprehensive to the degree that I kept reflecting on why authors focus on an area, or a time period. It is thematically organized, so frequently you jump forward and back in time, or from country to country, within a passage or paragraph. That had the effect, for me, of making it difficult to get settled into the narrative. And I generally love books that are Watch in Horror as Capitalism Wrecks Things, but oh, the writing in this. It's dry as cotton mouth.