The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson - ★★★★

I know it's absurd and you're not going to believe me. But I had always wanted to read the box, the history of shipping containers as a history major, you just know with a title like that, that it's going to be dynamite. And indeed it was. I know absolutely everything about shipping containers now, from the early development in metal containers to standardized containers with hardened sides and corners that could support stacking other containers on top of them as the ships became transformed from jury rigged ships to hold containers to ships that held nothing but containers. What a magnificent and fantastic history of shipping containers is the box. Learn the rise and fall and rise again of Sealand and the brilliance of its inventor and creator who could see container shipping before anyone can you imagine that they used to lift cargo onto boats in big, like sacks with ropes and tie them to pallet random things. Then teamsters highly trained would sort the boat to make sure the weight was on the right side. Failing to sort the cargo properly and stacking it probably could cause the boat to capsize. To go from that to cranes on docks that can load hundreds of containers consecutively without stopping boats coming in unloading reloading and then out again. The entire world running on shipping containers. Every business affected every person's life changed, all because of the box that could travel on ships. on trucks on rail. What incredible complexities mostly involving rather boring discussions with standardizations groups and starts and stops, designs that didn't work ideas that weren't ready yet. But what a great history and what a joy it was to finally read the box. The history of shipping containers.

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