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Reinventing Wool

Name: Reinventing Wool
Brand: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
SKU: 9781421455129
Price: 66.99 AUD
Availability: InStock

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESSISBN: 9781421455129

How a Natural Fiber Survived the Synthetic Revolution

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$66.99

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By Melissa M. Littlefield
Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
Release Date: December 8, 2026
Format: HARDBACK
Dimensions: 229 x 152 mm
Weight:
Pages: 248

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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 Woolites cold-water campaigns—complete with department-store sheep baths—the invention of washable wool, and the USDAs little-known DDT-based mothproofing agent EQ-53, Reinventing Wool traces how a once-revered fiber was repeatedly reengineered to fit the ideals and anxieties of an increasingly synthetic age.

Weaving together textile science, advertising archives, governmental reports, and her own experience as a fiber artist, Littlefield highlights the cultural forces that reshaped wools reputation. She shows how mid-century interventions altered not only the fiber itself but also public understanding of what counts as "natural," "improved," or "modern." The consequences extend well into the present, influencing how we value materials, evaluate environmental claims, and imagine the future of textiles. Reinventing Wool offers a fresh perspective on the intertwined histories of chemistry, agriculture, fashion, and consumer culture.

Melissa M. Littlefield is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of several books, including Instrumental Intimacy: EEG Wearables and Neuroscientific Control. She is a fiber artist who hosts the knittingthestash podcast on Youtube.

Table of Contents Preface Introduction: Wool, Science, and the Synthetic Revolution 1. The Cold-Water Miracle Soap: Woolites 1950s Campaign for Wool 2. Heres Wool That Wont Shrink: Making Wool Machine Washable 3. Now Its Easy with EQ-53: Mothproofing Wool with DDT 4. The Greasy Truth: Turning Wool into Lanolin Afterword: Whats Left of Wool? Acknowledgements A Note on Sources

In this lively book, Melissa Littlefield expertly weaves together storytelling, science, and popular culture to tell a fascinating new story about this ancient fiber.Reinventing Woolwill change how you think about your clothes—and the complex web of science, technology, people, and animals behind the things we wear.

—Jenell Johnson, author of Every Living Thing: The Politics of Life in Common

At a time when interest in natural fibres centres nostalgia and myth-making, Reinventing Wool is a welcome antidote. In a style both entertaining and concise, Melissa Littlefield navigates the intersection of technology, politics, and sociocultural forces, in this masterful story of wools past, present, and future.

—Ailbíona McLochlainn, Donegal knitwear designer

As both a scholar and fibre artist, Littlefield uncovers the remarkable history of wools chemical reinvention and marketing in mid-century America. Reinventing Woolcompels us to ask where our wool comes from, how and why it has been modified, and what kind of fibre we want in our textiles.

—Felicia Lo, Founder of SweetGeorgia Yarns

Reinventing Wool makes fascinating reading. Its full of little-known facts about the evolution of the wool industry, revealing unexpected connections, and showing the role of wool in society and our lives.

—Assia Brill, author of Distitch—A New Knitting Concept

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