Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This book explores how the cotton industry, originating in India, sparked the industrial revolution. It chronicles the shift from handcrafting to mechanized factory production in Britain. This transition changed workers' lives as jobs moved from homes to mills, often employing children. The book also reveals harsh conditions on American cotton plantations reliant on slave labor. Contrasting the once-booming British mills to India's now-thriving industry, it focuses on the human stories of industrialists, laborers, and slaves on all sides of the cotton trade.

This is an engrossing, easy-to-read, and often heart-wrenching narrative. The information is enlightening for anyone with an interest in the Industrial Revolution.

NetGalley, Andrea Romance

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Ever look at a piece of clothing and think, how did this go from a plant to my closet?

It's a major process and probably most have no idea how it all works. Well, there's a book about that.

The book covers three hundred years and three continents as well as the technology, the labor forces, and the business of cotton industry. How this plant moved people from their home seamstress businesses into factories with machines that made clothing far faster.

The industry also pushed cities to change their structures and the way people traded/purchased goods, but there are many human stories within the pages of this book. Ones that are important to read.

A lot of research went into this book and I learned that there's far more to my cotton shirt than I realized.

NetGalley, Patricia W. Fischer

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This is a re-issue of one of the best comprehensive books on the cotton industry. Cotton weaving was one of Britain's main industries at the start of the industrial revolution and this book looks at our part in that industry from a global perspective. What happened here in the UK was hugely impacted by what happened right across the globe. This book is well written, going into detail, but never getting bogged down and dragging. It is easily accessible, but also historically detailed. It would be of interest all levels of knowledge.

NetGalley, Hannah Hill

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Great book for study of the Cotton Industry, spanning from the importation from India to England, then to the United States. In depth information of the industrialization of the first Cotton Mills in Britain, the workers and child labor use to meet demand. The living conditions among worker were deplorable. The United States took the lead in growing cotton and used slave trade to excel in the trade. Documentation of first hand accounts of life of the industrialist, mill workers, plantation owners and slaves provides great insight of the technology trade as it evolved.

NetGalley, Sandra Rogaskie