The Box [Review]
I finished the book The Box - How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger (by Marc Levinson) two days ago. It's a good book -- on a scale out of 1 star, I give this book 1/1 star(s).1
Impressions
When I first pick up a book, I frequently look at the publishing date to get a sense of how relevant and up to date the book is. And although this book was published nearly 20 years ago (first published in 2006), in my view, this book is still highly relevant and does a fantastic job laying out the inception, evolution, and adoption of the shipping container from the pre-shipping-container era to the post-shipping-container era (1990s-ish).2 Moreover, this book also doesn't speculate about the future -- it does not aim to talk about the implications and future prospects of containerization and rather focuses directly on the history and development of containerization. As such, despite changes in shipping lines, world economies, and the nature of industrialization, this book remains evergreen3 in that it has not lost its place even after 20 years since its publishing.
Since this book is on history, I should note that historically, history has been 'written by the winners' and leaves out perspectives. That's not to say that Levinson's book is bad, it's just something to note and remember while reading this book -- that this book is not definitive in its history and there are probably other perspectives on containerization that are missing from this book.
Thoughts
Book was good. I liked it. Book is on containerization, which can loosely be defined (by me) as the global phenomena of the gradual acceptance and adoption of shipping containers as well as the gradual transition towards shipping containers as the primary transportation method for most goods.
In a way, this book is niche; the historical story of the shipping container is not particularly relevant to day-to-day life and most likely only those who find some interest in an adjacent topic/field (history, shipping/maritime affairs, or industrialization) are primed to find this book somewhat interesting. As such, don't feel discouraged if while reading this book (or for that matter, any other book) you don't find it riveting or interesting - this book is not likely to appeal to the general population, and it might be beneficial for you to read a different book.
The book is chronologically structured and consists of 14 long-ish (~20 pages) chapters. The 2nd chapter starts the story in the 1940s/50s, and the last chapter leaves us in the 1990s.
Chapter Summaries
Ch 1: The shipping container is important!
Ch 2 describes the landscape of shipping before the invention of containers.
Ch 3: Malcolm McLean starts shipping with boxes. Almost no one (besides the ICC) cares.
Ch 4: Well it seems like I didn't put anything here when I was reading so the chapter title is called "The System". Go make of it what you can.
Ch 5 talks about the port authority battle between Brooklyn, NY and Newark, NJ. Also talks about the political ramifications that containers brought to NY.
Ch 6 describes the different attitudes that the Western and Eastern longshore (shipyard) workers' unions had on containers. There's some good history here.
Ch 7 is about the long dispute and history of the process towards standardizing containers.
Ch 8: Container boom.
Ch 9: Containers in Vietnam.
Ch 10: The world containerizes! Singapore does well wrangling this new technology.
Ch 11: Containers!! But then Supply > Demand and price wars start happening. Also oil crises.
Ch 12: Become big shipping line and build big ships? Might work.
Ch 13: The 1980s, rail road deregulation, the emerging coalition of shippers, how manufacturers adapt to containers.
Ch 14 is a recap of the previous chapters and also the end. Also talks about JIT Manufacturing.