I this book because...
I’ve spent my life tracing the first 20,000 years of our drive to dress ourselves, and this book adds unique knowledge to that search.
Aslan traces the development of the three great natural fibers, wool, silk, and cotton, in Central Asia, a remarkably convoluted and fascinating story ranging from handmaking gorgeous textiles to the destruction of people and environments that the growing of water-thirsty cotton for vast markets has caused. Indeed, cotton recently swallowed the entire inland Sea of Azov and its tributaries, leaving the marooned docks and ships stuck in this new desert.
His well-paced page-turner draws from decades of personal experience living and working there, helping rebuild local lives through reconsidered textile industries. The bottom line is we must stop wasting this wonderful but destructive fiber.
1 author picked Unravelling the Silk Road as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Three textile roads tangle their way through Central Asia. The famous Silk Road united east and west through trade. Older still was the Wool Road, of critical importance when houses made from wool enabled nomads to traverse the inhospitable winter steppes. Then there was the Cotton Road, marked by greed, colonialism and environmental disaster.
At this intersection of human history, fortunes were made and lost through shimmering silks, life-giving felts and gossamer cottons. Chris Aslan, who has spent fifteen years living and working in the region, expertly unravels the strands of this tangled history and embroiders them with his own…