Celebrated historian Joshua B. Freeman tells the story of the factory and examines how it has reflected both our dreams and our nightmares of industrialization and social change. He whisks readers from the textile mills in England that powered the Industrial Revolution to the colossal steel and car plants of twentieth-century America, on to today's behemoths making sneakers, toys, and cellphones in China and Vietnam. A sweeping, global history of the rise of the factory and its effects on society.