The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

I second this recommendation of a fantastic book, mildly inconvenienced by the author delving into _very specific details_, like whole paragraphs of different sizes of locks that felt like line noise to me. It also offers a very interesting perspective on the fears of the AI/automation craze, like, what happened to whole towns of dock workers who used to manually pack goods in round-hulled ships and got replaced by a single machine moving a container on a flat ship. Still, I'm not sure it's exactly "people who did hard things" as much as the story of decades-long incremental changes brought by a bunch of people.

The Box by Marc Levinson is the incredible story of the dawn of containerized shipping. It is a little shocking just how recently this happened (the very first experimental loads were in the 1950s), and that the standard of shipping before containers was for longshoremen to literally hand carry boxes of stuff onto ships and stuff them just anywhere. You would be stunned to realize just how new and unused the piers of San Francisco really are, because they were built with massive government subsidies at exactly the wrong time. The book covers the courageous people involved, the political and economic impacts, and how the industry truly found its footing prioritizing absolutely reducing operational costs over all other concerns (like delivery speed).

Not sure if this is helpful, but a friend fed this conversation through ChatGPT and had it summarize for easier reading: -The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy -Bigger by Marc Levinson -The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production-- Toyota's Secret Weapon in the Global Car Wars That Is Now Revolutionizing World Industry by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos -Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men's Epic Duel to Rule the World by Erik Larson -Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard -White -The Arms of Krupp: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Dynasty that Armed Germany at War by William Manchester -Edison by Edmund Morris -Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow -The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century by Steven Watts -Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler -The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage -The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick -Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age by Michael S. Malone…

Here are some histories of specific industries I've read recently and supremely enjoyed: - The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production-- Toyota's Secret Weapon in the Global Car Wars That Is Now Revolutionizing World Industry - Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men's Epic Duel to Rule the World - Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (of all of these not the most amazing but still interesting) - The Arms of Krupp: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Dynasty that Armed Germany at War And then you can learn a lot by reading about the people who built the industries too. Here are a few I've been reading about recently that I recommend: - Edison by Edmund Morris (Just read it backwards, you'll see.) - Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow - The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century by Steven Watts - Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler I also got some interesting suggestions asking a similar question on Twitter a bit ago.…

I've been reading Boxes - How The Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levison lately. It's pretty interesting and enjoyable. http://smile.amazon.com/The-Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller/d... (http://smile.amazon.com/The-Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller/dp/0691136408?sa-no-redirect=1)

Stories of Your Life and Others is a collection of short stories by Ted Chiang. The stories explore wildly different topics, but every one of them is amazing. Someone on HN had recommended The Box by Marc Levinson. It's a history of the shipping container. That sounds dreadfully prosaic, but the book is well written and the shipping container's influence on our modern global economy cannot be overstated. Not reading per se, but Dan Carlin's WWI podcasts on the Hardcore History blog are well worth listening to. http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/

"The Box" Marc Levinson

The Box: How The Shipping Container Made The World Smaller And The World Economy Bigger - Marc Levinson. There are so many facets to this book. It's the story of Malcom McLean's drive to make containerisation a reality. It's a history of the global economy since WWII. It goes into detail about labour relations on the docks and about how changes in shipping change the fortunes of cities. One stand out chapter details the logistics of getting military materiel into Vietnam before and after containerisation and then McLean's idea that there was no point bringing all those empty boxes back - might as well stop off at Japan and pick up some transistor radios. This book is well worth your time.