Reinventing Wool: How a Natural Fiber Survived the Synthetic Revolution

How chemistry, culture, and industry remade a natural fiber-and reshaped our closets. Wool once shaped daily life in the United States. The ubiquitous textile clothed soldiers and filled civilian wardrobes; sheep even grazed on the White House lawn.Today, however, wool apparel represents a sliver of the global textile market.In Reinventing Wool, Melissa M. Littlefield uncovers the surprising story behind this dramatic shift. Rather than fading quietly as synthetics rose to prominence, wool became the focus of a sweeping mid-twentieth-century effort to "modernize" natural fibers through chemistry, industry, and politics.Littlefield reveals how, between the 1930s and 1960s, wool was recast as a material in need of technological rescue.Industrial chemists coated it with resins, laboratories experimented with moth-killing compounds, and federal agencies promoted new treatments that promised convenience to modern consumers.Detailing stories like Woolite's cold-water campaigns-complete with