‘We’re asking a lot of these people’: how fragile is

A new book looks at how the pandemic highlighted issues with the supply chain and how precarious things still are

We seem to live in a time of magic, when a slight movement of our fingers can get us anything we ever wanted on our doorstep. A toaster? Yours tomorrow. Cat food? It will be here by Thursday. The process from click to door is so easy, it doesn’t require a second thought.

In his book, How the World Ran Out of Everything, New York Times journalist Peter Goodman is out to change that. With the amount of exploitation in the supply chain, the ease of such transactions is not magic – it’s more magical thinking.