I love microhistories. They're so sweeping. They explain so much of life, and politics, and economics. <a href="https://expendablemudge.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-box-demystifying-invisible-world.html">Marc Levinson's terrific <i>THE BOX</i>: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger</a>, for a foundational read in this subject, is another sweeping microhistory to read and enjoy. Or maybe "value" is a better word; the prose in a microhistory is of secondary importance. Clarity is, or should be, the author of a microhistory's primary aim.

Author Kumekawa, Harvard historian by day, read that lesson, internalized it, and applies it to every piece of this complex-but-not-complicated story of the modern world using one barge's life history. The interconnectedness of the global economy, the ways and means of the greedy to avoid scrutiny...always, always it boils down to greed...and detailing the astonishing accumulation of profit from unglamourous quotidian needs-meeting.

What makes the story of a floatel/mobile military barracks/overflow prison as engrossing in this book is the carefully constructed mental diagram of interconnections of the barge's redesigns and refits and destinations. It was, however, that very complexity that knocked off my fifth star. Just too much work needed to follow them all to derive the full import of his points will cost even the most felicitous of writers a star. Shopping for the least profit-trimming places to "register" the barge...that's code for "who will take a small enough bribe for it to be cheaper than actual safety maintenance?"...as seaworthy and owned by a legitimate business has kept the author's research interesting. I expect his search history caused the FBI, NSA, and other initialism-yclept shadow dwellers a good deal of curiosity.

Why I myownself want you to read it is that it uses something very simple as a lens to focus attention on the quiet parts of capitalism that very badly need saying out loud. The money the owners of this barge collected was never huge, but was "protected" from taxation so greater in effect than simple face value. It is the fundament...double sense very much intended...of international capital's business model.

In case you're new here, I do not subscribe to the "greed is good" mindset.

Author Kumekawa's done us a solid in getting curious one day when he heard of a prison barge moored in New York City's river. (I think it's the East River, but can't be sure...could be the Bronx River, could be Long Island Sound, but I'm too lazy to look it up.) Where it's led him is the place I hoped it would go: The bank lobby where the capitalists hide their ill-got gains from the people whose labor produces them.

Good choice for a read in the present political climate.

This was a very interesting read. I know next to nothing about economics, so a lot of the information was new to me. It was a little dry and read mostly like an academic text, as expected. But I did appreciate the way the author used the vessel as a story-telling device, following the ship across the globe through its various uses.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. The book releases on May 6th, so if you’re interested be sure to check it out!

In The Vessel, we explore the ship that has been financed and leveraged by different countries of the world, registered in another, and serving different purposes as needed politically, socially, and economically. I’ve always been curious about how things work in open seas, and this book helped me learn a bit more.

I thought this book was very interesting and easy to understand. I also like how each chapter relates to a different region.

A barge is built 45 years ago, and turned into an accommodation vessel—a “coastel”—to house oil rig workers, soldiers, prisoners, factory workers…but mostly to be carried by the currents of politics, geopolitics, economics, whims of shipping magnates and registry preferences, and culture. Kumekawa does an amazing job of paying attention to the contexts of shipbuilding—regulatory changes, government fiscal policy, crime statistics, historical foundations that set into motion movements carried out in contemporary times. The vessel (and her sister) are not tremendous feats of shipbuilding but it is indicative of the transitory needs of various national and business interests. It’s hard to think of any aspect the author may have missed. But if you needed to know how we got “here,” this book will trace the flow of our shared lifetimes—and our forebears—through the story of this “empty vessel.”