14/08/2025
"In this fascinating and accessible account, Tim Queeney unravels the sinuous, fifty-thousand-year-old history of a material that even today is vastly more ubiquitous and important than we have ever thought to consider."
Lincoln Paine, author of The Sea and Civilization
A unique and compelling adventure through the history of rope and its impact on civilisation, in the vein of single-subject bestsellers like Salt and Cod.
Tim Queeney is a sailor who knows more about rope and its importance to humankind than most. In Rope, Queeney takes readers on a ride through the history of rope and the way it weaves itself through the story of civilisation. From Magellan's world-circling ships, to the 15th-century fleet of Admiral Zheng He, to Polynesian multihulls with crab claw sails, he shows how without rope, none of their adventurous voyages and discoveries would have been possible. Time travelling, he describes the building of the pyramids, the Roman Colosseum, Hagia Sophia, Notre-Dame, the Sultan Hasan Mosque, the Brooklyn Bridge, and countless other constructions, both past and future that would not have been possible without rope.
