Download Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate AudioBook Free
On ship-tracking websites, the waters are black with dots. Each dot is a dispatch; each dispatch is loaded with boxes; each field is loaded with goods. In postindustrial economies, we no longer produce but buy. We buy, so we should ship. Without those dots, the entire world would not work. Freight transport has been no less cutting edge than the printing press or the Internet, yet it is all but invisible. Away from general population scrutiny, transport revels in suspect routines, dubious providers, and a shady system. Infesting our waters, poisoning our air, and a perfect culprit of acoustic pollution, transport is environmentally indefensible. And there are the pirates. Rose George, acclaimed chronicler of what we'd rather dismiss, sails from Rotterdam to Suez to Singapore on boats the length of football fields and the elevation of Niagara Falls; she patrols the Indian Sea with an antipiracy activity pressure; she joins seafaring chaplains and investigates the harm that boats inflict on endangered whales. Sharply useful and enjoyable, Ninety Percent of Everything shows the workings and perils of an unseen world that holds the key to our economy, the environment, and our very civilization.
