Ninety Percent of Everything

Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate

By: Rose George

Narrated by: Pearl Hewitt

On ship-tracking websites, the waters are black with dots. Each dot is a ship; each ship is laden with boxes; each box is laden with goods. In postindustrial economies, we no longer produce but buy. We buy, so we must ship. Without all those dots, the world would not work.

Freight shipping has been no less revolutionary than the printing press or the Internet, yet it is all but invisible. Away from public scrutiny, shipping revels in suspect practices, dubious operators, and a shady system. Infesting our waters, poisoning our air, and a prime culprit of acoustic pollution, shipping is environmentally indefensible. And then there are the pirates.

Rose George, acclaimed chronicler of what we would rather ignore, sails from Rotterdam to Suez to Singapore on ships the length of football fields and the height of Niagara Falls; she patrols the Indian Ocean with an antipiracy task force; she joins seafaring chaplains and investigates the harm that ships inflict on endangered whales.

Sharply informative and entertaining, Ninety Percent of Everything reveals the workings and perils of an unseen world that holds the key to our economy, our environment, and our very civilization.

©2013 Rose George (P)2017 Tantor

Critic reviews

“Consistently absorbing...Timely as well as deft...George's spirited book cracks open a vast, treacherous and largely ignored world.” ( The New York Times)

Good book about something we rarely think about

Good detail and history about something we rarely think about but is absolutely needed. highly recommend

You will learn a lot... buy this book.

What made the experience of listening to Ninety Percent of Everything the most enjoyable?

I learned so much reading this book... from what life is like aboard a container ship to the incredible impact this industry has had on our society. The author doesn't dwell too long on any particular topic and liked it that way.

Have you listened to any of Pearl Hewitt’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I have never heard this narrator before, but I thought she was well-cast. She sounded like she could have been the author... seemed well-connected to the material.

Startling

Given how important shipping is to our lives, its shocking how little the average person knows. The author does a marvelous job of telling the story by embedding it within an actual voyage aboard a container ship.

Insight into "the human element" of shipping

George weaves in history, facts, and her opinions on shipping, labor practices, pirates, merchant navies, whales, and sea rescues into her experience riding a container ship with its crew. Eye-opening for a reader who otherwise has little to no exposure to the day to day work of seafarers who keep global supply chains moving.

Take a peek into the world of shipping

This book tells stories of modern-day shipping and the effects of shipping on the world and the mariners who manage these massive ships. Rose George is an outsider in the shipping industry, so do not expect otherwise. She writes about her perspective and shows shipping in a way that we (who are not closely associated with the industry) can't see because of the "sea blindness" that we have on land. She speaks not only of the crew and their responsibilities and day-to-day lives but about the effects shipping has had on marine ecosystems. Her focus on pirates is also incredibly interesting because of the differing views between her and the crew. This book is INCREDIBLY interesting and unveils the shipping industry that feels disconnected from the rest of the world, even though it is what holds the world together.