This was a fun book to read. It was assigned by the MOOC I am following : “Paradox of War”, led via video lectures from a Princeton sociologist. I’m interested in the these approaches to writing “big history”– An Ecology of Modernity, sure qualifies!– by tracing the path of a particular “thing.” The best I have read are not from academics like Netz, but from serious narrative non-fiction writers like Kurlansky.. “Salt” and before that “Cod” and Dolan who writes of whaling and later of fur trade. Still, “Barbed wire” is a keeper. I never knew that “Gulag” is an acronym! Random facts. how many millions of miles of barbed wire produced in the USA during WWI. jacket blurb from Noam Chomsky…