Product Description

In the tradition of Mark Kurlansky’s Cod and Salt, this endlessly revealing book reminds us that the fiber we think of as ordinary is the world’s most powerful cash crop, and that it has shaped the destiny of nations. Ranging from its domestication 5,500 years ago to its influence in creating Calvin Klein’s empire and the Gap, Stephen Yafa’s Cotton gives us an intimate look at the plant that fooled Columbus into thinking he’d reached India, that helped start the Industrial Revolution as well as the American Civil War, and that made at least one bug—the boll weevil—world famous. A sweeping chronicle of ingenuity, greed, conflict, and opportunism, Cotton offers "a barrage of fascinating information" (Los Angeles Times).

---

Product Details

Publisher	Penguin (Non-Classics)
Format	Paperback Bargain Price
Author	Stephen Yafa
Label	Penguin (Non-Classics)
Dewey Decimal Number	338
Studio	Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Pages	416
Title	Cotton: The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber
Publication Date	2006-06-27
Manufacturer	Penguin (Non-Classics)

---

Customer Reviews

this is a wonderful read

Review by G. Lyle, 2009-11-01

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.

---

Cotton - Look around, its King

Review by Meredith Folsom, 2009-07-16

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.

---

Very thorough and very interesting.

Review by Rudi Franke, 2009-05-11

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.

---

Good Book-Cotton A Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber

Review by Jack D. Seay, 2009-02-24

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

---

Planted it - Picked it - Wore it - Now, I've read it !

Review by V. Campbell, 2006-08-20

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.

---