The Crimson Thread

The story of the modern world is written in cotton. It is a story that begins not with empires or kings, but with a tiny, 8, 000-year-old thread preserved in a copper bead in a Neolithic grave, and with a simple fishing net that allowed an ancient Peruvian civilization to thrive. In The Crimson Thread, we embark on a sweeping global journey to uncover the epic history of this humble fiber and how it became the commodity that built our world-and nearly broke it.
For millennia, India was the world's textile workshop, producing legendary fabrics so fine the Romans called them ventus textilis, or "woven air." This ancient dominance was shattered by the Industrial Revolution in Britain, where a series of brilliant inventions-the spinning jenny, the water frame, the steam engine-created a new, insatiable hunger for raw cotton. This book reveals in stark, unforgettable detail how that hunger led directly to the two great sins of the 19th century: the brutal expansion of chattel slavery in the American South, and the systematic destruction of India's economy under the British Raj.
The crimson thread of exploitation that runs through this history connects the overseer's whip in Mississippi to the impoverished weaver in Bengal. That same thread continues today. The Crimson Thread is a damning exposé of the modern fashion industry, from the environmental catastrophe of the dying Aral Sea to the state-sponsored forced labor of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, which produces a fifth of the world's cotton.
It reveals the secrets of the fast fashion business model and the "new bondage" hidden in the clothes we wear every day. But this is not just a story of exploitation. It is also a powerful story of resistance and hope. We meet the abolitionists who first weaponized consumer choice, the Indian freedom fighters who spun their own cloth as an act of rebellion, and the modern activists, scientists, and designers who are pioneering a new, more sustainable future through Fair Trade, organic farming, and the slow fashion revolution.
The Crimson Thread is a monumental work of narrative history, a book that will leave you with a profound new understanding of the fabric of our lives, and the choices we all face in weaving a better future.