Out of Stock: The Warehouse in the History of Capitalism

Dara Orenstein, associate professor of American studies, delivers an account of perhaps the most generic and underappreciated site in American commerce and industry: the warehouse. She traces the progression from the 19th century’s bonded warehouses to today’s foreign-trade zones and contends that these zones are emblematic of why warehouses have begun to supplant factories in the age of Amazon and Walmart. Drawing from cultural geography, cultural history and political economy, she demonstrates the centrality of warehouses for corporations, workers, cities and empires.