The Box

Like any student of globalization, I love this book because it focuses like a laser on how a single critical innovation—the development of the shipping container—effectively shrank the oceans, accelerated the pace of sea cargo, and made it possible for consumers to depend on faraway factories.

It is a truly seminal work.

I suppose I can’t get over books that tell me how something I’ve never thought about before influences almost every aspect of my life. This book is that book. Who knew about the struggles of containerization and how it makes the modern economy possible? 

It’s also the story of the man (and fellow North Carolinian) Malcolm McLean, who brought the idea to life—an idea that, for better or worse, made it possible to stuff our homes and offices with cheap goods produced around the world.

Innovation comes in unusual sizes and shapes, but few over the past half-century have had as much impact as the mundane, rectangular steel shipping container that is the star of The Box. The best entrepreneurs come up with ideas that solve problems, and Marc Levinson tells the story of the trucking executive who reinvented the way products are moved around the globe. Put simply, containerization made globalization possible. "It was not routine for shoppers to find Brazilian shoes and Mexican vacuum cleaners in stores in the middle of Kansas. Japanese families did not eat beef from cattle in Wyoming,… show more.

In a blurb on the back, a guy says "the modern shipping container may be a close second to the Internet on the way it has changed our lives." That's debatable, but Levinson makes the case in telling the history and impact of those 40-foot metal boxes that stack on freight ships and transfer easily to trains to trucks. Back in the On The Waterfront days, goods and crates and canvas sacks hoisted by ropes were loaded and unloaded separately onto ships. It was death-defying labor for longshoremen, and inefficient business. Containers that could travel neatly and intermodally made goods… show more.