Good books are meant to be shared. At CrossDock, we’re firm believers that supply chains aren’t just about trucks, ships, and warehouses — they’re about the stories, ideas, and lessons that keep the whole system moving.
In this post, we’re sharing a handful of books that have caught our attention and that we love. Not ranked, not in any particular order — just reads that made us pause, think, and see logistics in a different light.
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson
Marc Levinson tells the story of how a simple steel box reshaped the global economy. What began as Malcolm McLean’s gamble in the 1950s turned into the backbone of globalization — slashing transport costs, standardizing trade, and reorganizing entire port cities and supply chains. It’s not just a book about containers, but about how efficiency quietly rewires the world.
Bill Gates wrote about it on his blog, calling it an “excellent book” and using it to highlight how shipping containers played a surprising role in accelerating globalization.
What we love about The Box is how it demonstrates that the magic of logistics often lies in the mundane aspects. A steel container isn’t glamorous, but it quietly rewired global trade — proof that in supply chains, simplicity scales better than brilliance.
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone
Brad Stone takes us inside the rise of Amazon — from Jeff Bezos sketching out his “regret minimization framework” to building what became the most powerful retail and logistics machine on the planet. The book traces Amazon’s relentless focus on customer obsession, its bruising battles with competitors, and the way it quietly rewrote how fulfillment, data, and scale come together. It’s as much a story about logistics as it is about leadership.
The Everything Store won the Financial Times / Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2013.
Reading The Everything Store is like peeking into the blueprint of modern e-commerce logistics. What sticks is not the tech wizardry, but how Amazon treated warehouses, trucks, and algorithms as one living system.
Interestingly, according to the LA Times in 2013, MacKenzie Scott — then wife of Jeff Bezos — gave the book a one-star review on Amazon, arguing it misrepresented parts of his story.
Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door — Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy by Christopher Mims
Christopher Mims takes readers on a journey that follows a single USB charger from a factory floor in Vietnam to a doorstep in America. Along the way, he unpacks the hidden machinery of modern commerce — from container ports and mega-warehouses to the algorithms and human labor that power last-mile delivery. It’s a fast-paced, behind-the-scenes look at how globalization, automation, and Amazon-style logistics quietly shape everyday life.
In 2021, Arriving Today was shortlisted for the Porchlight Business Book Awards under Current Events & Public Affairs.
What makes Arriving Today special is how it makes the invisible visible. As supply chain nerds, we know the complexity — but Mims translates it into a narrative anyone can follow. It’s the rare logistics book that you could hand to a non-logistics friend and they’d finally “get” why this stuff matters.
Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate by Rose George
In Ninety Percent of Everything, Rose George takes readers deep into the world of shipping — the hidden backbone of globalization. Joining the crew of a container vessel, she documents not just the scale and mechanics of ocean trade, but also the human reality: the danger, monotony, and isolation of life at sea. The result is a blend of sharp reportage and storytelling that makes you realize how much of our daily lives depends on an industry that operates mostly out of sight, and often out of mind.
Supply chains often celebrate efficiency, but this book reminds us that behind the steel and spreadsheets are sailors, risks, and oceans that still determine the rhythm of global commerce.
Made in America by Sam Walton
In his autobiography, Sam Walton walks through the story of building Walmart from a single five-and-dime into the world’s largest retailer. It’s less about flashy strategy and more about relentless execution — cost discipline, obsession with efficiency, and a deep belief in passing savings directly to customers. Along the way, Walton reveals how practices like cross-docking, scale-driven bargaining power, and logistics innovation became Walmart’s secret weapons long before supply chain became a buzzword.
What hits home in Made in America is how supply chain brilliance shows up in the most unglamorous details — from squeezing pennies out of trucking routes to doubling down on distribution centers when no one else cared. Walton’s legacy is proof that retail empires aren’t built in boardrooms, but in warehouses.
Jeff Bezos counted Made in America among his executive reading list, Jamie Dimon shared it with interns as a must-read, and Warren Buffett often praised Sam Walton’s instincts — making the book a quiet favorite among some of the world’s most influential business leaders.
How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain by Peter S. Goodman
Peter Goodman, New York Times global economics correspondent, takes us back to the COVID years when the world’s supply chains buckled. From empty shelves and chip shortages to stranded ships at sea, he chronicles how decades of efficiency-at-all-costs left the system brittle when it was tested. The book combines frontline reporting with a sharp critique of globalization’s “just-in-time” obsession, making it both a postmortem of the pandemic era and a warning about what comes next.
What stands out in Goodman’s book is how it exposes the myth that “lean” always means “smart.” The pandemic showed us that supply chains weren’t weak by accident — they were designed that way.
In 2024, How the World Ran Out of Everything was named a Best Book of the Year by Foreign Policy and The Aspen Institute, and was also longlisted for the Porchlight Business Book Award.
Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
In Delivering Happiness, Tony Hsieh shares the journey of Zappos — from a scrappy startup selling shoes online to a billion-dollar acquisition by Amazon. But unlike most business books, this isn’t a tale of growth hacks or cost efficiencies. Tony zeroes in on culture as the real engine of scale: empowering employees, building trust, and treating customer service not as a department but as the entire company. The book blends memoir, lessons from Zappos’ experiments in workplace happiness, and a blueprint for how purpose can be a supply chain differentiator.
What we loved was how Tony reframed logistics. Speed mattered, but what mattered more was how customers felt when the box landed on their doorstep. It’s a reminder that behind every SKU and shipping label lies a human experience — and sometimes, that’s the most powerful metric of all.
The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen
Rich Cohen chronicles the rise of Samuel Zemurray, who started as a small fruit trader and went on to shape one of the most influential industries of the 20th century. Zemurray’s story is about vision, timing, and the ability to build networks of farms, railroads, and ports that powered the global banana trade. The book doubles as a sweeping history of how food supply chains and global commerce evolved long before today’s container ships and digital platforms.
What struck us most is how Zemurray treated logistics not as a back-office function but as the core of strategy. Long before “end-to-end supply chain” became a buzzword, he stitched together farms, railroads, and ports into one seamless system — proving that whoever owns the flow, owns the game.
The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources by Javier Blas & Jack Farchy
Blas and Farchy pull back the curtain on the secretive world of commodity traders — the middlemen who move oil, metals, and grains across the globe. From the Cold War to modern sanctions, they show how firms like Glencore, Trafigura, and Vitol operated in the shadows yet often shaped geopolitics as much as governments did. It’s a sweeping narrative that explains how critical resources flow, who controls them, and why supply chains of commodities are inseparable from power itself.
What we love about this book is how it exposes the “shadow supply chain” — the part you don’t see in warehouses or ports, but in trading desks where a phone call can reroute tankers or redirect grain ships. For anyone obsessed with logistics, it’s a reminder that control isn’t always physical; sometimes, it’s about who holds the contracts.
Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company by Patrick McGee
Patrick McGee draws on over 200 interviews with former Apple engineers, executives, and internal sources to weave a behind-the-scenes narrative of how Apple’s decision to anchor its manufacturing in China reshaped not just its business but global power dynamics.
The book reveals the tension between efficiency and control: Apple co-invented sophisticated supply chain processes with Chinese partners, yet that very dependence exposed the company to political and strategic vulnerabilities.
McGee’s account is a reminder that the most resilient supply chains are not just operational choices but geopolitical commitments — ones that can deliver unmatched advantages, yet carry risks that unfold over decades. We’re seeing that unfold right now, as new U.S.–China tariffs place products like iPhones and MacBooks squarely in the crosshairs.