Full name: The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History

Author: Kassia St. Clair Year: 2018 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Non Fiction, Art, Historical fiction Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9781631494802 1631494805

From colorful 30,000-year-old threads found on the floor of a Georgian cave to the Indian calicoes that sparked the Industrial Revolution, The Golden Thread weaves an illuminating story of human ingenuity. Design journalist Kassia St. Clair guides us through the technological advancements and cultural customs that would redefine human civilization--from the fabric that allowed mankind to achieve extraordinary things (traverse the oceans and shatter athletic records) and survive in unlikely places (outer space and the South Pole). She peoples her story with a motley cast of characters, including Xiling, the ancient Chinese empress credited with inventing silk, to Richard the Lionhearted and Bing Crosby. Offering insights into the economic and social dimensions of clothmaking--and countering the enduring, often demeaning, association of textiles as "merely women's work"--The Golden Thread offers an alternative guide to our past, present, and future. Similar books: The Greatest Stories Never Told by Rick Beyer The Age of Homespun by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich 1492 by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto Captain Bligh's Portable Nightmare by John Toohey The Evolution of Civilizations by Carroll Quigley A Brief History of the Western World by Thomas H. Greer Love Stories by Jonathan Ned Katz Unnatural Murder by Anne Somerset The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair Catastrophe by David Keys Napoleon's Privates by Tony Perrottet A Treasury of Deception by Michael Farquhar Cotton by Stephen Yafa Civilization by Roger Osborne What the Butler Saw by E. S. Turner Oh, Yikes! by Joy Masoff Empty Mansions by Bill Dedman Miracles and Massacres by Glenn Beck What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool Natasha's Dance by Orlando Figes