Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate

By Rose George

Book Overview

Eye-opening and compelling, the overlooked world of freight shipping, revealed as the foundation of our civilization On ship-tracking websites, the waters are black with dots. Each dot is a ship; each ship is laden with boxes; each box is laden with goods. In postindustrial economies, we no longer produce but buy. We buy, so we must ship. Without shipping there would be no clothes, food, paper, or fuel. Without all those dots, the world would not work. Freight shipping has been no less revolutionary than the printing press or the Internet, yet it is all but invisible. Away from public scrutiny, shipping revels in suspect practices, dubious operators, and a shady system of "flags of convenience." Infesting our waters, poisoning our air, and a prime culprit of acoustic pollution, shipping is environmentally indefensible. And then there are the pirates. Rose George, acclaimed chronicler of what we would rather ignore, sails from Rotterdam to Suez to Singapore on ships the length of football fields and the height of Niagara Falls; she patrols the Indian Ocean with an anti-piracy task force; she joins seafaring chaplains, and investigates the harm that ships inflict on endangered whales. Sharply informative and entertaining, Ninety Percent of Everything reveals the workings and perils of an unseen world that holds the key to our economy, our environment, and our very civilization.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805092633
• ISBN13: 9780805092639
• Release Date: August 2013
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A Bit Misleading

The writing is fine. You can understand 95% of what she's trying to convey. Every once in a while you feel her moral superiority which grates a little but is easy to ignore. But what bothers me the most is that the title led me to believe she would be talking about the entire shipping process. But instead she just talks about what it's like to be on a ship transporting random goods. It's fairly interesting and I've learned a bit but it's not what I was hoping for.