Product Description

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy has been lauded by the New York Times, Financial Times, and reviewers worldwide. Translated in fourteen languages, Travels has received numerous awards for its frank and nuanced discussion of global economic realities.  Now updated and revised--including a discussions of environmental issue--this fascinating book illustrates crucial lessons in the debate on globalization.

The major themes and conclusions from the first edition are intact, but in  response to questions from readers and students around the world, the second edition now includes:

• Updates on the people, businesses, and politics involved in the production of the T-shirt.
• Discussions of environmental issues related to both international trade and the T-shirt's life story.
• A look at the maturing of the anti-globalization movement, and the recent shift in public opinion against internationalism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4377 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .90" h x 6.48" w x 9.04" l, .86 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
During a 1999 protest of the World Trade Organization, Rivoli, an economics professor at Georgetown, looked on as an activist seized the microphone and demanded, "Who made your T-shirt?" Rivoli determined to find out. She interviewed cotton farmers in Texas, factory workers in China, labor champions in the American South and used-clothing vendors in Tanzania. Problems, Rivoli concludes, arise not with the market, but with the suppression of the market. Subsidized farmers, and manufacturers and importers with tax breaks, she argues, succeed because they avoid the risks and competition of unprotected global trade, which in turn forces poorer countries to lower their prices to below subsistence levels in order to compete. Rivoli seems surprised by her own conclusions, and while some chapters lapse into academic prose and tedious descriptions of bureaucratic maneuvering, her writing is at its best when it considers the social dimensions of a global economy, as in chapters on the social networks of African used-clothing entrepreneurs.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Engrossing….(Rivoli) goes wherever the t-shirt goes and there are surprises around every corner…full of memorable characters and vivid scenes." (TIME)

"An engaging and illuminating saga…Rivoli follows her T-shirt along its route, but that is like saying that Melville follows his whale…Her nuanced and fair-minded approach is all the more powerful for eschewing the pretense of ideological absolutism, and her telescopic look through a single industry has all the makings of an economics classic." (New York Times)

"…Succeeds admirably… T-shirts may not have changed the world, but this story is a useful account of how free trade and protectionism certainly have." (Financial Times)

"Rarely is a business book so well written that one would gladly stay up all night to finish it..."  (CIO: Chief Information Officer Magazine, June 15, 2005)

"Globalization is a hot-button topic that generates strong feelings along with images of boarded-up, independent businesses in America and exploitative sweatshops overseas. But what exactly is it? Rivoli chronicles the round-the-world odyssey of a T-shirt, from Texas cotton-growers to an African used-clothing bazaar, to reveal how the planetary economy really works. Whether you feel hurt or helped by globalization, you'll certainly understand it better after reading this fascinating account." (Entrepreneur Magazine)

"The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy is an excellent piece of work - a thorough, lucid and (best of all) honest examination of how politics and economics intertwine in the real world." (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

"…a fascinating exploration of the history, economics and politics of world trade…The Travels of a T-Shirt is a thought-provoking yarn that exhibits the ugly, the bad and the good of globalization, and points to the unintended positive consequences of the clash between the proponents and opponents of free trade." (Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

"…a readable and evenhanded treatment of the complexities of world trade… As Rivoli repeatedly makes clear, there is absolutely nothing free about free trade except the slogan." (San Francisco Chronicle)

Review
"Part travelogue, part history, and part economics, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy is ALL storytelling, and in the grand style. Globalization critics who read this book will understand why it is impossible to lift countries out of poverty without the power of free markets, while policymakers will learn the equally bracing lesson that economic progress for the wealthiest of nations means nothing without the democratic political institutions that uplift the poorest of nations. A must-read."
—Peter J. Dougherty, Senior Economics Editor, Princeton University Press, author of Who's Afraid of Adam Smith?