I'm still not sure that certain diversions there should truly belong to the book on shipping. Otherwise it would've been a 5* book. What is OK for Melville and fiction should be given another thought in nonfiction.

I've decided to add the merchant marine to the list of industries where I'd rather not work. Shipping stuff by sea has become incredibly cheap, and the quality of life on board container ships has suffered as their owners have looked to cut costs as much as possible.

This is combined with the unethical but totally legal practice of choosing your own country of origin (with most companies choosing the ones with the least cost and/or oversight), which leaves the crew at the mercy of uncaring legal systems when they're stiffed by their employers.

Turnaround times while in port have shortened to less than a day, meaning that shore leave is short when the crew gets any at all. Maersk (and other companies) forbids families (due to piracy), drinking (for obvious reasons), and plenty of other things that would make a seafaring life less monotonous.

I knew most of this before reading the book, but I was happy to see it fleshed out.

If I enjoyed the book, why'd I give it three stars? The content felt padded out. The journey itself could have been a long article. The piracy chapter was way too long, as were some of the other non-narrative portions of the book. It was worth my $2, but it would have benefited from substantial trimming. ( )

This is a very well organized depiction of life at sea in the container shipping industry. World history, anthropology, piracy, and world economics are all deciphered in this account of actual travel time on a large container ship. This story of sailing the oceans brings many stories together and raises the value of all the seafarers involved in the shipping industry. ( )

7 good:

From the back cover: Eye-opening and compelling, the overlooked world of freight shipping, revealed as the foundation of our civilization

On ship-tracking Web sites, 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, and so we must ship. Without shipping there would be no clothes, food, paper, or fuel. Without all those dots, the world would not work. Yet freight shipping is all but invisible. Away from public scrutiny, it revels in suspect practices, dubious operators, and a shady system of "flags of convenience." And then 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.

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I purchased this book about 5 years prior after hearing George speak at the Festival of Books. With the supply chains disrupted worldwide by the COVID19 pandemic, I found the time was right to read this discussion of the shipping industry that moves "90 percent of everything" across the world. An enlightening read (including sections about piracy off of Somalia) and how the industry is in the process of changing. She also talks about the topics that come up when you are doing this voyage - including the motivations for piracy (extreme poverty), copepods, damage to the environment and much more. A good read in which I learned a lot. ( )

A fascinating book about how 90% of everything is shipped, and the historical and current realities of life at sea for the people who transport your rubber ducks from China, Taiwan, or Vietnam to your eager little hands and cross seas, storms, pirate-infested waters and more. ( )