{"product_id":"the-box-how-the-shipping-container-made-the-world-smaller-and-the-world-economy-bigger-9780691123240","title":"The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn April 1956  a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning  container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the containers creation  the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted  and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about.  Published on the fiftieth anniversary of the first container voyage  this is the first comprehensive history of the shipping container. It recounts how the drive and imagination of an iconoclastic entrepreneur  Malcom McLean  turned containerization from an impractical idea into a massive industry that slashed the cost of transporting goods around the world and made the boom in global trade possible.  But the container didnt just happen. Its adoption required huge sums of money  both from private investors and from ports that aspired to be on the leading edge of a new technology. It required years of high-stakes bargaining with two of the titans of organized labor  Harry Bridges and Teddy Gleason  as well as delicate negotiations on standards that made it possible for almost any container to travel on any truck or train or ship. Ultimately  it took McLeans success in supplying U.S. forces in Vietnam to persuade the world of the containers potential.  Drawing on previously neglected sources  economist Marc Levinson shows how the container transformed economic geography  devastating traditional ports such as New York and London and fueling the growth of previously obscure ones  such as Oakland. By making shipping so cheap that industry could locate factories far from its customers  the container paved the way for Asia to become the worlds workshop and brought consumers a previously unimaginable variety of low-cost products from around the globe.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45495998742581,"sku":"ByrdShop_0691123241","price":44.48,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780691123240.jpg?v=1780905879","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-box-how-the-shipping-container-made-the-world-smaller-and-the-world-economy-bigger-9780691123240","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}