How the Shipping Container Remade the World

It is just a corrugated steel box. Yet the humble shipping container did more to shape the modern world than almost any invention of the twentieth century, quietly rewiring global trade, remaking cities, and building the supply chain that now holds us all together, and sometimes hostage.

Edward Callenford tells the sweeping story of containerization: the stubborn trucking magnate who forced the idea into being, the fierce battles over standards and unions, the ports that boomed and the ports that died, and the breathtaking choreography of cranes, ships, and software that moves millions of boxes without losing track of a single one. He shows how a simple act of standardization collapsed the cost of distance and created the world of cheap, abundant goods we take for granted.

Fast-paced and richly illustrated with original diagrams, this is economic history as adventure, the tale of how a steel box remade the world.