The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy

The current selection for my book club is Pietra Rivoli's The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade. Overall it is an interesting book, though I found large parts to be a bit dry. Rivoli traces the life of a t-shirt, from the cotton farms of Texas to the factories that make the shirts in China to after it is discarded by the American consumer and donated to Salvation Army, only to end up in Tanzania being sold in a market. The book focuses a lot on the policies and politics that drive the present system, which is something that didn't hold my interest. I probably would have appreciated a condensed version that did not go into so much detail about these aspects of the process, though the composite of information does make for an eye-opening look at all that goes into something simple as a cheap t-shirt, an item of clothing I had thought very little of before reading this book. Though I wouldn't recommend this book to everyone, I do think it would be a valuable resource for anyone interested in globalization.