The Fabric of Civilization

“A journey as epic, and varying, as the Silk Road itself...[The Fabric of Civilization is] like a swatch of a Florentine Renaissance brocade: carefully woven, the technique precise, the colors a mix of shade and shine and an accurate representation of the whole cloth” (The New York Times)

The story of humanity is the story of textiles―as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture.

In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code.

Assiduously researched and deftly narrated, The Fabric of Civilization tells the story of the world's most influential commodity.

Virginia Postrel is an award-winning journalist and independent scholar. She is a contributing editor for Works in Progress, and has been a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. She is the author of the highly acclaimed The Substance of Style and The Power of Glamour. Her research has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She lives in Los Angeles, California.