Synopsis
Eric Schlosser's extremely compelling, un-nerving attack on America's fast food industry is done with care and precision as he addresses different aspects of restaurants like McDonald's--from the meat-packing industry to how flavorings are chemically created in the lab. Sharing a history of the birth of fast food, Schlosser goes on to prove how this industry has radically transformed the country's health, cultural machinations, and more. This is a must-read for anyone interested in factory farming, the food industry, and the continuing transformation of America into a mono-culture.
The author attacks America's fast food industry, blaming it for the downfall of the contemporary American lifestyle. He blames burgers and shakes, readily available on the way home from work, for reducing quality time families once shared in their kitchens and dining rooms. He also condemns the industry for promoting high-fat diets, which he believes may be responsible for many health problems.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2001-01-17 | | Edition Description: | Illustrated |
| Size | | Length: | 356 pages | | Height: | 9.3 in | | Width: | 6.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.1 in | | Weight: | 21.6 oz |
Publisher's Note
A national Magazine Award winning journalist charts the fast food industry's enormous impact on our health, landscape, economy, politics, and culture in a book destined to join the ranks of SILENT SPRING, THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH, and THE JUNGLE.
Are we what we eat?
To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar Amerca. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.
Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from the California subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many of fast food's flavors are concocted. He hangs out with the teenagers who make the restaurants run and communes with those unlucky enough to hold America's most dangerous job -- meatpacker. He travels to Las Vegas for a giddily surreal franchisers' convention where Mikhail Gorbachev delivers the keynote address. He even ventures to England and Germany to clock the rate at which those countries are becoming fast food nations.
Along the way, Schlosser unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths -- from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, and even real estate. He also uncovers the fast food chains' efforts to reel in the youngest, most susceptible consumers even while they hone their institutionalized exploitation of teenagers and minorities. Schlosser then turns a critical eye toward the hot topic of globalization -- a phenomenon launched by fast food.
FAST FOOD NATION is a groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that may change the way America thinks about the way it eats.
Industry Reviews
"Schlosser makes a powerful argument against an industry that exploits its workers, destroys the environment and creates an obese society in the relentless pursuit of profit."
Book - Houghton Mifflin
"...FAST FOOD NATION is a tool for understanding the nature of corporate capitalism in the 21st century."
London Review of Books - James Meek (05/24/2001)
"Eric Schlosser provides a view of the country and its people that is both rich and disturbing."
Times Literary Supplement - Sidney Mintz (09/14/2001)
"[T]he good news is that this isn't a frivolous book at all. Schlosser is a serious and diligent reporter, and ''Fast Food Nation'' isn't an airy deconstruction but an avalanche of facts and observations as he examines the fast-food process from meat to marketing. Or maybe that's the bad news. One of the central themes here is the degree to which the modern fast-food business is defined by the industrialization of most of its parts, a development whose consequences Schlosser sees as almost universally negative."
New York Times - Rob Walker (01/21/2001)
"An exemplary blend of polemic and journalism, guaranteed to put you off your lunch."
Kirkus Reviews (12/01/2000)
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