The Box
Subtitle: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: January 24, 2008
Place of publication: Princeton, N.J.
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 400
ISBN-13: 9780691136400
Subjects: Maritime / nautical trades; Business & Economics; Business / Economics / Finance; Business/Economics; Economic History; History; Industrial Design - Packaging; American History; Economics
First sentence: On April 26, 1956, a crane lifted fifty-eight aluminum truck bodies aboard an aging tanker ship moored in Newark, New Jersey.
Description: In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about. Drawing on previously neglected sources, economist Marc Levinson shows how the container transformed economic geography, devastating traditional ports such as New York and London and fueling the growth of previously obscure ones, such as Oakland. By making shipping so cheap that industry could locate factories far from its customers, the container paved the way for Asia to become the world's workshop and brought consumers a previously unimaginable variety of low-cost products from around the globe.--From publisher description.
Table of contents: title: The world the box made; title: Gridlock on the docks; title: The trucker; title: The system; title: The battle for New York's port; title: Union disunion; title: Setting the standard; title: Takeoff; title: Vietnam; title: Ports in a storm; title: Boom and bust; title: The bigness complex; title: The shippers' revenge; title: Just in time