The Box

Winner of the 2007 Anderson Medal, Society for Nautical Research Winner of the 2007 Bronze Medal in Finance/Investment/Economics, Independent Publisher Book Awards Shortlisted for the 2006 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Honorable Mention for the 2006 John Lyman Book Award, Science and Technology category, North American Society for Ocean History One of Financial Times (FT.com) Best Business Books of 2013 (chosen by guest critic Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft) "One of the most significant, yet least noticed, economic developments of the last few decades [was] the transformation of international shipping... The idea of containerization was simple: to move trailer-size loads of goods seamlessly among trucks, trains and ships, without breaking bulk... Along the way, even the most foresighted people made mistakes and lost millions... [A] classic tale of trial and error, and of creative destruction."--Virginia Postrel, The New York Times [See full review http://bit.do/Box-NYT-Postrel] "Marc Levinson's concern is business history on a grand scale. He tells a moral tale. There are villains ... and there is one larger than life hero: Malcom McLean... Levinson has produced a fascinating exposition of the romance of the steel container. I'll never look at a truck in the same way again."--Howard Davies, The Times (UK) "Like much of today's international cargo, Marc Levinson's The Box arrives 'just in time.'... It is a tribute to the box itself that far-off places matter so much to us now: It has eased trade, sped up delivery, lowered prices and widened the offering of goods everywhere. Not bad for something so simple and self-contained."--Tim W. Ferguson, The Wall Street Journal "[A] smart, engaging book... Mr. Levinson makes a persuasive case that the container has been woefully underappreciated... [T]he story he tells is that of a classic disruptive technology: the world worked in one fashion before the container came onto the scene, and in a completely different fashion after it took hold."--Joe Nocera, The New York Times [See full review http://bit.do/Box-NYT-Nocera] "By artfully weaving together the nuts and bolts of what happened at which port with the grand sweep of economic history, Levinson has produced a marvelous read for anyone who cares about how the interconnected world economy came to be."--Neil Irwin, Washington Post "Mr Levinson... makes a strong case that it was McLean's thinking that led to modern-day containerisation. It altered the economics of shipping and with that the flow of world trade. Without the container, there would be no globalization."--The Economist [See full review http://bit.do/Box-Economist] "A fascinating new book... [I]t shows vividly how resistance to technological change caused shipping movements to migrate away from the Hudson river to other East Coast ports."--Management Today [See full review http://bit.do/Box-MT] "Marc Levinson's The Box ... illustrates clearly how great risks are taken by entrepreneurs when entrenched interests and government regulators conspire against them. Even after these opponents are dispatched, technological and economic uncertainty plague the entrepreneur just as much as the vaunted 'first-mover advantage' blesses him, perhaps more. The story of the shipping container is the story of the opponents of innovation."--Chris Berg, Institute of Public Affairs Review "International trade ... owes its exponential growth to something utterly ordinary and overlooked, says author Marc Levinson: the metal shipping container... The Box makes a strong argument... Levinson ... spins yarns of the men who fought to retain the old On the Waterfront ways and of those who made the box ubiquitous."--Michael Arndt, BusinessWeek [See full review http://bit.do/Box-BW-Arndt] "[An] enlightening new history... [The shipping c

Marc Levinson is an economist in Washington, DC. He was formerly a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, an economist at a leading investment bank, and finance and economics editor at The Economist.

Preface ix Acknowledgments to the Second Edition xvii Chapter 1 The World the Box Made 1 Chapter 2 Gridlock on the Docks 21 Chapter 3 The Trucker 47 Chapter 4 The System 72 Chapter 5 The Battle for New York's Port 102 Chapter 6 Union Disunion 135 Chapter 7 Setting the Standard 170 Chapter 8 Takeoff 202 Chapter 9 Vietnam 230 Chapter 10 Ports in a Storm 254 Chapter 11 Boom and Bust 285 Chapter 12 The Bigness Complex 310 Chapter 13 The Shippers' Revenge 329 Chapter 14 Just in Time 355 Chapter 15 Adding Value 375 Notes 391 Bibliography 465 Index 491