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Description

Alex Aragona speaks with Virginia Postrel as she explores how her newest book traces how textiles shaped our modern societies.

References from Episode 66 with Virginia Postrel

• Virgina Postrel is the author of The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion; The Substance of Style: How The Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness; The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress, and The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, featuring the majority of this episode’s quotes and chapter references. All titles are available for order on Amazon (book titles are hyperlinked).


• Steve Horwitz’s book, Hayek's Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions, commentates gender roles over time and can be purchased from Amazon Canada at this link.


• Virginia mention’s David Friedman’s study on Medieval Iceland’s cloth currency and can be read here.


• John Styles, a historian of the industrial revolution, noted how Northern Italy outnumbered Lanarkshire’s water-powered factories in his work, Fashion, Textiles and the Origins of Industrial Revolution, available at this link.


• You can learn more about the Caraglio silk-throwing mill in Piedmont, Italy that Virgina recommends in the podcast at this link.