Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World [Hardcover]

Rich and ambitious. . . . More than an economic history, or a chronicle of architectural feats and labor movements,Fascinating. . . Freeman shows how factories have had an overwhelming influence on the way we work, think, move, play and fight.A lively chronicle of the factory [that] delves into the nitty-gritty of manufacturing [and] successfully melds together those nuggets with social history on the shop floor and beyond the factory walls.You may have no detailed knowledge of factories except that they can be converted into cool lofts. In that case, youll learn much from historian Joshua Freeman.A global tour of three centuries, from English textile mills to Detroit steel plants to Chinese iPhone factories.Freeman uses the history of the factory as a way to re-examine how workers are treated worldwide.Fascinating. . . . A compulsively readable cultural history of the birth and development of factories and their impact on society.Ranging from the early industrial revolution in England to the factories in modern-day China that produce iPhones, with stops along the way in New England mill towns, Henry Fords Detroit and Stalins Russia, this remarkable book traces the history of the giant factory and the peoplecapital, labor, consumers, and fascinated observerswhose lives it shaped. If you want to know where the world we live in came from, this is a good place to start.A sweeping, global history of the rise ofthe factory and its effects on society.