Behemoth

Bol Partner

A sweeping, global history of the rise of the factory and its effects on society. Factories, with their ingenious machinery and miraculous productivity, are celebrated as modern wonders of the world. Yet from William Blake’s “dark Satanic mills” they have also fuelled our fears of the future. Telling the story of the factory, Joshua B. Freeman takes readers from the textile mills in England that powered the Industrial Revolution to the steel and car plants of twentieth-century America, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, to today’s behemoths making trainers, toys and iPhones in China and Vietnam. He traces arguments about factories and social progress through such critics and champions as Marx, Ford and Stalin. And he explores the representation of factories in the work of Margaret Bourke-White, Charlie Chaplin and Diego Rivera.

Bol

"Freeman’s rich and ambitious Behemoth depicts a world in retreat that still looms large in the national imagination.…More than an economic history, or a chronicle of architectural feats and labor movements." —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times In an accessible and timely work of scholarship, celebrated historian Joshua B. Freeman tells the story of the factory and examines how it has reflected both our dreams and our nightmares of industrialization and social change. He whisks readers from the early textile mills that powered the Industrial Revolution to the factory towns of New England to today’s behemoths making sneakers, toys, and cellphones in China and Vietnam. Behemoth offers a piercing perspective on how factories have shaped our societies and the challenges we face now.