Port of Call

Virtually everything we use or consume, from Apple computers to Chiquita bananas, makes its way to us by sea. In fact, if you think about it, the modern world would not be possible without the creation of the ship: Would we even have a globe? But what exactly is a ship, and in particular a cargo ship, if it can contain so many things—homes and prisons, hotels and offices, lavish vacation venues and toxic industrial sites, hospitals and casinos and oil rigs and airplanes, and even, when abandoned, ghosts? Reviewing Ian Kumekawa’s Empty Vessel, Atossa Araxia Abrahamian examines these questions—and more. A study of a single barge called Jascon 27, Empty Vessel charts the ship’s movement from its origins through its various transformations—from first serving as a transport barge owned by a Norwegian company to being kitted out with cabins for offshore oil workers, to traversing the globe and “at each stop” containing a different set of things, each an integral parts of “the ongoing expansion of the offshore economy.” In his portrait of a ship, writes Abrahamian, “Kumekawa reminds us how dependent on the maritime world the global economy really is, from the production of energy to the movement of people.” He also reminds us that no matter the tariffs, and trade wars, and border restrictions imposed by one regime or another, we are all connected together by a vast offshore world in which barges like the Jascon 27 move.  Read “­­The Wild Lives of Cargo Ships”

The Other Americans

Americans are obsessed with work, and that obsession sometimes elides the dark side of our insistent work ethic: Sometimes even when you do work, or often even where you work, you still risk death or injury, an absence of healthcare or even a place to live. “Indeed, between 40 and 60 percent of those experiencing homelessness are, in fact, working,” Libby Watson writes in her review of a new book by Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us, for Books & the Arts. An examination of five families in Atlanta who work but are also homeless, Goldstone’s book, Watson argues, reveals a more general rule—at least in the United States: that no matter how hard one works, no matter one’s work ethic, one is always subject to the whims of a social and economic order that could put you on the streets. In the end, Watson writes, “a book like this ought to be a rallying cry, the 21st-century equivalent of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.” Read “How America Failed the Unhoused”