
Story of My People by Edoardo Nesi
As recently as two decades ago, Prato was the seat of Italy’s high-end textile industry, the name a shorthand for designers like Armani, Valentino, Versace. But by 2010, the city had been deeply damaged by the global economy, transformed into a hub for low-end clothes manufacturing. In Story of My People, Edoardo Nesi gives a firsthand account of a city facing an economic and psychological crisis.
Edoardo Nesi never wanted to run a textile factory, but he didn’t have much choice in the matter. Nesi thought of himself primarily as a writer, but since the 1920s, his family had operated a weaving mill in the Tuscan city of Prato, and working at the mill was a rite of passage. So after flunking out of law school and rotating through a series of factory-floor positions as “assistant foreman in charge of raw materials, assistant technician in charge of mixing and blending fibers, assistant warehouseman … assistant everything, once all was said and done,” Nesi finally became the boss. He balanced