The Box
The Box by Marc Levinsonby Marc Levinson
Hacker ApprovedRanked 3 of 51 history books by recommenders
People recommend it as an engaging history of the shipping container, giving perspective on containerized shipping and its wider effects.
People recommend it as an engaging history of the shipping container, giving perspective on containerized shipping and its wider effects.
16 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 16
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 16 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
History of the shipping container
“There's a good writeup of this in "The Box", a history of the shipping container by Marc Levinson.”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Uber, Lyft drivers in Massachusetts form first US ride-share union” “I highly recommend reading "The Box", about the history of the shipping container.”
Comment from 7 Jul 2026 in “Microsoft Fire IdTech Team at Id Software”
Other history books people recommend
The four most recommended other history books, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Dawn of Everythingby David Graeber and David Wengrow | 23 | 5 | 82% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Cadillac Desertby Marc Reisner | 18 | 0 | 100% | 11 | — | Approved |
| The Boxby Marc LevinsonThis page | 16 | 0 | 100% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Sapiensby Yuval Noah Harari | 13 | 9 | 59% | 8 | — | — |
| Chip Warby Chris Miller | 13 | 1 | 93% | 7 | — | Approved |
What people said
15 of the 17 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I found reading "The Box" about the change to containerized shipping to be an interesting way to gain perspective”
“I wanted to make the simple, affordable sandbox for short to (very) long running agents”
“And "The Box": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27325968”
“I highly recommend reading "The Box", about the history of the shipping container.”
“a small number of packages (box, data.table) designed by people who understand programming”
“box now is basically a fully capable lightweight daemon-less container runtime, much like podman”
“the storage is kind of expensive”
“It was interesting to see this totally-unrelated-to-our-times process from the outside.”
“There's a good writeup of this in "The Box", a history of the shipping container by Marc Levinson.”
“you want it somewhere that you can enforce security settings”
“you don't need capacity, so, don't store it => length == capacity”
“it may force a download of the entire OneDrive/Box each time”
“In terms of anti-war poems I prefer "The Box" by Kendrew Lascelles.”
“it should be on the HN standard reading list, much like _The Box_”
“Third-party vendors like DropBox, Box and many others have made products that look like OneDrive but actually work”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.