The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber "With wit and
intelligence, Yafa demonstrates how a good deal of history can
be learned by following a single thread." -The Washington Post
In the tradition of Mark Kurlansky’s Cod and Salt, this
endlessly revealing book reminds us that the fiber we think of
as ordinary is the world’s most powerful cash crop, and that it
has shaped the destiny of nations. Ranging from its
domestication 5,500 years ago to its influence in creating
Calvin Klein’s empire and the Gap, Stephen Yafa’s Cotton gives
us an intimate look at the plant that fooled Columbus into
thinking he’d reached India, that helped start the Industrial
Revolution as well as the American Civil War, and that made at
least one bug—the boll weevil—world famous. A sweeping chronicle
of ingenuity, greed, conflict, and opportunism, Cotton offers “a
barrage of fascinating information” (Los Angeles Times). For a
scrawny, gangling plant that produces hairs about as
insubstantial as milkweed, cotton has exerted a mighty hol