Fleeced: Unraveling the History of Wool and War

Not everything about wool is warm and fuzzy.

Wool, for millennia the cold climate textile fiber, has a long relationship to war, both in terms of supporting it and causing it. Wool's strategic value in wartime, a position it gained over centuries, and contrived shortages of same in the 20th century, have helped drive consumers' transition to the synthetic fibers that have enabled fast fashion, and as both fiber and cloth are global contemporary pollutants.

Fleeced argues that the 19th century...