The Golden Thread

How Fabric Changed History

By: Kassia St. Clair

Narrated by: Helen Johns

The best-selling author of The Secret Lives of Color returns with this rollicking narrative of the 30,000-year history of fabric, briskly told through 13 charismatic episodes.

From colorful 30,000-year-old threads found on the floor of a Georgian cave to the Indian calicoes that sparked the Industrial Revolution, The Golden Thread weaves an illuminating story of human ingenuity. Design journalist Kassia St. Clair guides us through the technological advancements and cultural customs that would redefine human civilization - from the fabric that allowed mankind to achieve extraordinary things (traverse the oceans and shatter athletic records) and survive in unlikely places (outer space and the South Pole). She peoples her story with a motley cast of characters, including Xiling, the ancient Chinese empress credited with inventing silk, to Richard the Lionhearted and Bing Crosby.

Offering insights into the economic and social dimensions of clothmaking - and countering the enduring, often demeaning, association of textiles as "merely women's work" - The Golden Thread offers an alternative guide to our past, present, and future.

©2018 Kassia St. Clair (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

So thorough and so broad

The amazing amount of technical details that go into making the threads and the patterns. So much dedication and history.

Fabulous research unveiling histories of cloth

Each chapter’s unique focus ties brilliantly together with the next as variegated wefts masterfully woven together into a tapestry so beautifully rendered as to inspire one to reflect on the world powered by cloth—the many beings who produce its fibres & the many hands who fashion the fabric.

Great book!

The history was fascinating and it’s well written. I wish he or she had gone into more specific fabrics.
The narration was great!!

Learned a lot

I appreciate all the stories that show the importance of textiles in everyday life and their impacts on society. I learned a lot about impacts that I never knew about, like how swimsuits affected competition rules for swimming.

A truly fascinating detailed account!!!

Wonderful premise that calls into question the common understanding and influence of cloth throughout human history.