Behemoth by Joshua B. Freeman

Behemoth by Joshua B. Freeman ISBN-13: 9780393246315 Hardback: 448 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton Company Released: Feb. 27, 2018

Source: Review copy from the publisher.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
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 textile mills in England that powered the Industrial Revolution and the factory towns of New England to the colossal steel and car plants of twentieth-century America, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union and on to today’s behemoths making sneakers, toys, and cellphones in China and Vietnam.

The giant factory, Freeman shows, led a revolution that transformed human life and the environment. He traces arguments about factories and social progress through such critics and champions as Marx and Engels, Charles Dickens, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Ford, and Joseph Stalin. He chronicles protests against standard industry practices from unions and workers’ rights groups that led to shortened workdays, child labor laws, protection for organized labor, and much more. Freeman also explores how factories became objects of great wonder that both inspired and horrified artists and writers in their time. He examines representations of factories in the work of Charles Sheeler, Margaret Bourke-White, Charlie Chaplin, Diego Rivera, and Edward Burtynsky.


My Review:
Behemoth looked at the history of giant factories from the 1700s until modern day. He started with the British textile mills in 1721 through 1840s. He then talked about the early American textile mills between 1801 through 1842. He looked at steam engines, iron plants, and steel mills from about 1851 to 1919. He looked at Henry Ford and assembly lines, scientific management, and unions from 1908 to the 1940s. He looked at how the Soviet Union industrialized in the 1920s and 1930s and at how America moved away from giant factories (and why) while the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were starting to build larger factories. He finally looked at how China and Vietnam have been building up giant factories.

In each chapter, he looked at why people wanted to build giant factories and at what people were saying about them, both positive and negative. He looked at the challenges and advantages of factories and talked about strikes and legal actions taken to help regulate labor conditions in factories. He talked about what type of people worked in factories: their gender, age, where they came from, how long they stayed, and such. He gave a summary of what happened to those giant factories after the period he mainly talked about. He talked about the impact they made and why things changed. Overall, I found the book very interesting and insightful. I'd recommend this book to people interested in factories.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.