Review of Cloth

[Mandira Samanta]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Cloth" by Elizabeth Anderson.]

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2 out of 5 stars

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Cloth is a nonfiction book by Columbia University alumnus Elizabeth Anderson on the history of cloth marketing during the Industrial Revolution. As this book is based on history, I was drawn to it because of my special inclination towards this subject.

This book depicted a three-generation story of a Scottish family starting with John Grant in the first century of the Industrial Revolution. This book gave detailed descriptions of their adventures and distress as Grant tried his luck as a cloth merchant. Their constant shift from place to place opened doors to novel challenges and hardships. John Grant and his whole family suffered as well as experienced, and learnt a lot from their ventures. Jean's constant support and faith in her husband's potential helped John to fix his aim fixed into this business.

Not only about the cloth business, this book also elaborated on the slave trade, exploitation of the colonised people and various types of infectious diseases. The pictures of child abuse and the distress of slaves are poignant throughout the pages of the book. This book also spoke highly about different kinds of clothes based on India and gave information about English marketing strategies in India.

Apart from business and other social issues, the book offered some personal letters among the Grant family members. These letters were intense with personal feelings and emotions. Even then, these letters were full of information about the education system, business and human connection.

I like how this book captured the glimpses of history through its description of marketing, supply and demand, slave trades, child labour and the struggle for capturing the Asian market.

I did not enjoy the detailed, minute and irrelevant description that this book offered about the family. As a matter of fact, this book lacked the essence of a true non-fiction writing. The narrative style was too boring to keep me enthusiastic about it.

However, the book is praiseworthy with its professional editing, which is without any typos. I would like to give this book a rating of 2 out of 5 stars because of its uninteresting style of narration and plenty of unnecessary elaboration. I would not recommend this book as it only provided me headache.

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Cloth
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