On Thursday, September 11, 2008, the Class of 2012 and other members of the Carleton community gathered in the Chapel for a convocation and afterward engaged in small group discussions based upon Travels of a T-Shirt in a Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli. Read summarization below.

"Succeeds admirably... T-shirts may not have changed the world, but their story is a useful account of how free trade and protectionism certainly have.."
- Financial Times

"This charming, intelligent narrative debunks myths on both sides of the globalization debate. Mixing historical perspective with current events, the book highlights that it's not market forces but avoiding them that creates winners in world trade... a rich tapestry of globalization past and present that focuses on real people to rip fabrications on all sides of the debate... a great read."
- Asia Times

"During a 1999 protest of the World Trade Organization, Rivoli, an economics professor at Georgetown, looked on as an activist seized the microphone and demanded, "Who made your T-shirt?" Rivoli determined to find out. She interviewed cotton farmers in Texas, factory workers in China, labor champions in the American South and used-clothing vendors in Tanzania. Problems, Rivoli concludes, arise not with the market, but with the suppression of the market. Subsidized farmers, and manufacturers and importers with tax breaks, she argues, succeed because they avoid the risks and competition of unprotected global trade, which in turn forces poorer countries to lower their prices to below subsistence levels in order to compete. Rivoli seems surprised by her own conclusions, and while some chapters lapse into academic prose and tedious descriptions of bureaucratic maneuvering, her writing is at its best when it considers the social dimensions of a global economy, as in chapters on the social networks of African used-clothing entrepreneurs."

--Excerpt from the Hardcover edition.