The Box deserves all of its accolades. The shipping container is one of the least romantic objects imaginable, a 40' by 8' by 8' steel and wood box full of, well, everything and anything. The basic idea behind containerization is that it takes about the same amount of time to move a box, no matter the size, and putting everything in one box enables goods to move from ship to train to truck at minimum cost, accelerating commerce everywhere. But while the idea seems simple, it took decades to make it a reality.

Levinson gets at both the creation and destruction in this account. The creation primarily follows Malcom McLean, a North Carolina trucking magnate who's relentless desire to cut costs and boldness to steer away from the way things were done created the first workable modern container system, using a pair of World War 2 vintage converted tankers. McLean was a lonely visionary at first, with other shipping lines taking decades to see the benefits of containers, even at 400% improvements in cost per ton of cargo moved. Containerization necessarily required massive capital investments in new ships and specialized loading gear, harmonization of international and cross-sector regulations across a multiple cartels, and new shipping practices from customers. A major turning point was the use of containers to ease a crisis in military logistics during the Vietnam War. With McLean's expenses covered by the Department of Defense, everything shipped back from Japan was pure profit. We've all benefited from reliability and cheapness of container shipped materials and goods.

But there was also plenty of destruction. Longshoremen unions were hit hardest. Longshoremen loaded and unloaded ships in a manner that their medieval predecessors would have understood, muscling goods between dock and hold only slightly aided by advances like the pallet, forklift, and powered crane. Being a longshoreman was a dangerous trade, injury rates were substantially higher than for other manual labor, but the tens of thousands of longshoremen were a unique community. They were also heavily involved with organized crime, pilferage, and while I'm generally on board with a "fuck all the bosses" stance, deliberate inefficiency in work just barely short of sabotage. Containers required far fewer men than break-bulk loading, and it kicked the foundations out from under longshoremen.

A second set of victims were traditional port cities, primarily New York and London. With 19th century infrastructure and labor practices, these cities were unable to adapt to containers. When shipping had been a substantial cost, factories were close to markets and docks. New intermodal models meant that factories could chase efficiencies worldwide, leading to the lost decades for both cities in the 1970s as they shifted from industry to finance, and rippling Rust Belts as factories and jobs moved from America and Europe to Asia. Ports able to make bold bets on new technologies flourished, like Newark, Rotterdam, Singapore, and Dubai, while others failed based on the harsh economic logic of new integrated supply chains.

Malcom McLean himself hit some of the destruction. He made further bold bets into very fast ships that sunk his company when the 1973 oil embargo drove fuel costs up. A second bet on large round-the-world service hit the opposite problem when oil prices crashed. He was still a rich man, but he never again achieved that flashing acme of success.

This is a detailed, extensive history. Where there are gaps, such as on good pricing data for shipping over time, Levinson makes the case that such data is probably unrecoverable, due to shifting exchange rates, complex per-cargo rates, and under the table kickbacks to major shippers.