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
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. In short, 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. Plus, 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.
Articles, reviews, interviews, TED Talks, etc. related to the book Ninety Percent of Everything
1. Review (New York Times) Life on Ships That Make World Go Round
Dwight Garner
Oct. 16, 2013
2. Review (Boston Globe) ‘Ninety Percent of Everything’ by Rose George
Matthew Price
Aug. 8, 2013
3. Video (TED Talk) Inside the Secret Shipping Industry
Rose George
October 2013
4. Audio interview (NPR’s Fresh Air) Shipping: The ‘Invisible Industry’ That Clothes and Feeds You
Terry Gross
Aug. 14, 2013
5. Review (Wall Street Journal) Journalist and the Sea
Marc Levinson
Aug. 20, 2013
6. Review (GCaptain) Book Review: ‘Ninety Percent of Everything’ Fails to Measure Up
John Konrad
Sept. 19, 2013
7. Review (The Wire) Ten Legitimately Fascinating Facts About the Shipping Industry
Eric Levenson
Aug. 12, 2013