[karaterobot]

Mark Kurlansky has done a brisk business in this kind of biography-of-a-thing, Salt, and Cod were the first two books I thought of when I read your post, but he's also got books called Salmon and Paper that I haven't read.

I think that I would put those books under the broad heading of social histories, which is a genre. You may also look for "microhistories", and here's a list of them:

https://www.librarything.com/tag/microhistory

[jbn]

Salt and Cod are great reads.

I would also recommend Skunk Works by Ben E. Rich & Leo Janos - The Box by Marc Levinson, which are fantastic as well.

For companies, I found Bad Blood, by Carreyrou entertaining but scary.

[fdw]

That looks really interesting, thank you very much!