I found reading "The Box" about the change to containerized shipping to be an interesting way to gain perspective a huge change, from the outside.

On one hand, you could see how it was rewriting shipping, then manufacturing, globalization, etc.

they touched on how the unions handled things, how real estate near waterways was changed (manufacturing and warehousing), and more

But on the other hand you could see how obvious it was the changes were going to happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Box_(Levinson_book)