'Behemoth' book review: We are what we manufacture

Capitalism, naturally, takes advantage of such increasingly swift and secretive moves

BEHEMOTH
A History of the Factory and the
Making of the Modern World
Joshua B Freeman
Illustrated; W.W. Norton & Company
427 pages; $27.95
 
Joshua B Freeman doesn’t chronicle the aftershocks of the loss of five million factory jobs from the American landscape or show you the impact of disappearing factory jobs on towns across America. And I wish he had addressed the abandoned plants, escalating drug crime and crowded food pantries.
 
But what this distinguished professor of history at CUNY’s Queens College does is lay out two centuries of factory production all