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	Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
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Product Details Binding Hardcover Dewey Decimal Number 394.10973 EAN 9780395977897 ISBN 0395977894 Manufacturer Houghton Mifflin Number Of Items 1 Number Of Pages 288 Publication Date January 17, 2001 Publisher Houghton Mifflin UPC 046442977890 Availability Usually ships in 24 hours Product Description 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. On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its thriftiness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America's diet, landscape, economy, and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways. Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, opens his ambitious and ultimately devastating exposé with an introduction to the iconoclasts and high school dropouts, such as Harlan Sanders and the McDonald brothers, who first applied the principles of a factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. Quickly, however, he moves behind the counter with the overworked and underpaid teenage workers, onto the factory farms where the potatoes and beef are grown, and into the slaughterhouses run by giant meatpacking corporations. Schlosser wants you to know why those French fries taste so good (with a visit to the world's largest flavor company) and 'what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns.' Eater beware: forget your concerns about cholesterol, there is--literally--feces in your meat. Schlosser's investigation reaches its frightening peak in the meatpacking plants as he reveals the almost complete lack of federal oversight of a seemingly lawless industry. His searing portrayal of the industry is disturbingly similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906: nightmare working conditions, union busting, and unsanitary practices that introduce E. coli and other pathogens into restaurants, public schools, and homes. Almost as disturbing is his description of how the industry 'both feeds and feeds off the young,' insinuating itself into all aspects of children's lives, even the pages of their school books, while leaving them prone to obesity and disease. Fortunately, Schlosser offers some eminently practical remedies. 'Eating in the United States should no longer be a form of high-risk behavior,' he writes. Where to begin? Ask yourself, is the true cost of having it 'your way' really worth it? --Lesley Reed Schlosser's incisive history of the development of American fast food indicts the industry for some shocking crimes against humanity, including systematically destroying the American diet and landscape, and undermining our values and our economy. The first part of the book details the postwar ascendance of fast food from Southern California, assessing the impact on people in the West in general. The second half looks at the product itself: where it is manufactured (in a handful of enormous factories), what goes into it (chemicals, feces) and who is responsible (monopolistic corporate executives). In harrowing detail, the book explains the process of beef slaughter and confirms almost every urban myth about what in fact 'lurks between those sesame seed buns.' Given the estimate that the typical American eats three hamburgers and four orders of french fries each week, and one in eight will work for McDonald's in the course of their lives, few are exempt from the insidious impact of fast food. Throughout, Schlosser fires these and a dozen other hair-raising statistical bullets into the heart of the matter. While cataloguing assorted evils with the tenacity and sharp eye of the best investigative journalist, he uncovers a cynical, dismissive attitude to food safety in the fast food industry and widespread circumvention of the government's efforts at regulation enacted after Upton Sinclair's similarly scathing novel exposed the meat-packing industry 100 years ago. By systematically dismantling the industry's various aspects, Schlosser establishes a seminal argument for true wrongs at the core of modern America. (Jan.) Forecast: This book will find a healthy, young audience; it's notable that the Rolling Stone article on which this book was based generated more reader mail than any other piece the magazine ran in the 1990s. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. What McDonaldization has done to our health, economy, and culture; from a National Magazine Award winner. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. Everyone frets about the nutritional implications of excessive dining at America's fast-food emporia, but few grasp the significance of how fast-food restaurants have fundamentally changed the way Americans eat. Schlosser documents the effects of fast food on America's economy, its youth culture, and allied industries, such as meatpacking, that serve this vast food production empire. Starting with a young woman who makes minimum wage working at a Colorado fast-food restaurant, Schlosser relates the oft-told story of Ray Kroc's founding of McDonald's. The author also tells about the development of the franchise method of business ownership and the health and nutrition implications of fast-food consumption. In a striking chapter, Schlosser gives a glimpse into the little-known world of chemically engineered flavorings, both natural and artificial. The coming together of so many diverse social, scientific, and economic trends in a single industry makes this book a relevant, compelling read and a cautionary tale of the many risks generated by this ubiquitous industry. Mark Knoblauch Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved '...Schlosser is a serious and diligent reporter...' '[Fast Food Nation] is a fine piece of muckraking, alarming without beling alarmist.' - Rob Walker, NYTBR 1/21/01 -- The New York Times '...reminiscent of Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle'.....' -- Boston Globe 'Schlosser establishes a seminal argument for the true wrongs at the core of modern America.' -- Publishers Weekly, Starred ''Fast Food Nation' should be another wake-up call, a super-size serving of common sense....' -- Atlanta Journal Constitution '...Schlosser is a serious and diligent reporter...' '[Fast Food Nation] is a fine piece of muckraking, alarming without beling alarmist.' -- Rob Walker, New York Times Book Review 1/21/01 'Fast Food Nation is the kind of book that you hope young people read because it demonstrates far better than any social studies class the need for government regulation, the unchecked power of multinational corporations and the importance of our everyday decisions.' -- Review 'Part cultural history, part investigative journalism and part polemic...intelligent and highly readable critique....' -- Time Out New York '...Schlosser is a serious and diligent reporter...' '[Fast Food Nation] is a fine piece of muckraking, alarming without beling alarmist.' - Rob Walker, NYTBR 1/21/01 (The New York Times ) 'Eric Schlosser's 'Fast Food Nation' is a good old-fashioned muckraking expose in the tradition of 'The American Way of Death' that's as disturbing as it is irresistible....Exhaustively researched, frighteningly convincing....channeling the spirits of Upton Sinclair and Rachel Carson....Schlosser's research is impressive--statistics, reportage, first-person accounts and interviews, mixing the personal with the global.' (The San Francisco Chronicle ) 'An exemplary blend of polemic and journalism....A tale full of sound, fury, and popping grease.' --starred review (Kirkus Reviews ) 'Schlosser is part essayist, part investigative journalist. His eye is sharp, his profiles perceptive, his prose thoughtful but spare; this is John McPhee behind the counter....' (The Washington Post ) '...everywhere in his thorough, gimlet-eyed, superbly told story, Mr. Schlosser offers up visionary glints....For pure, old-fashioned, Upton Sinclair-style muckraking, the chapters on the meatpacking industry are masterful.' (Observer ) ''Fast Food Nation' is investigative journalism of a very high order. And the fit between the author's reporting and his narrative style is just about perfect. The prose moves gracefully between vignette and exposition, assembling great quantities of data in small areas without bursting at the seams.' (Newsday ) 'Schlosser establishes a seminal argument for the true wrongs at the core of modern America.' (Publishers Weekly, Starred ) '...reminiscent of Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle'.....' (Boston Globe ) ''Fast Food Nation' should be another wake-up call, a super-size serving of common sense....' (Atlanta Journal Constitution ) 'Fast Food Nation is the kind of book that you hope young people read because it demonstrates far better than any social studies class the need for government regulation, the unchecked power of multinational corporations and the importance of our everyday decisions.' (USA Today ) '...Schlosser has done huge amounts of intense, on-the-scene reporting, and he backs up his concerns very convincingly. He presents incredibly resonant images and statistics and observations the reader is unlikely to forget.' --San Jose Mercury News 'Part cultural history, part investigative journalism and part polemic...intelligent and highly readable critique....' --Time Out New York 'Fast Food Nation presents these sometimes startling discoveries in a manner that manages to be both careful and fast-paced. Schlosser is a talented storyteller, and his reportorial skills are considerable.' --Hartford Courant 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. Six Cassettes, 9 hrs. Read by Rick Adamson FAST FOOD NATION - the groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that has changed the way America thinks about the way it eats - and spent nearly four months on the New York Times bestseller list - now available on cassette! Are we what we eat? To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar America. 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 propelling 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. Along the way, he 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, 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. Praise for FAST FOOD NATION: '...a fine piece of muckracking, alarming without being alarmist. . .Schlosser is a serious and deligent reporter.' - The New York Times Book Review 'FAST FOOD NATION should be another wake-up call, a super-size serving of common sense...' - Atlanta Journal Constitution 'Schlosser is part essayist, part investigative journalist. His eye is sharp, his profiles perceptive, his prose thoughtful but spare; this is John McPhee behind the counter...' - The Washington Post Eric Schlosser has been a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly since 1996. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, the Nation, and The New Yorker. He has received a National Magazine Award and a Sidney Hillman Foundation Award for reporting. In 1998 Schlosser wrote an investigative piece on the fast food industry for Rolling Stone. What began as a two-part article for the magazine turned into a groundbreaking book: Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (2001). The book helped to change the way that Americans think about what they eat. Fast Food Nation was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than two years, as well as on bestseller lists in Canada, Great Britain, and Japan. It has been translated into more than twenty languages. Schlosser's second book, Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market (2003), explored the nation's growing underground economy. It also became a New York Times bestseller. In 2003, Schlosser's first play, Americans, was produced at the Arcola Theatre in London. Hoping to counter the enormous amount of fast food marketing aimed at children, Schlosser decided to write a book that would help young people understand where their food comes from, how it's made, how it affects society, and how it can harm their health. Co-written with Charles Wilson, Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food became a New York Times bestseller in the spring of 2006. Later that year, Fox Searchlight Pictures released a major motion picture based on Fast Food Nation, directed by Richard Linklater and co-written with Schlosser. 'It's a mirror and a portrait,' the New York Times said of the film, 'as necessary and nourishing as your next meal.' Schlosser is currently at work on a book about America's prison system. Customers who bought this item also bought The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals Chew On This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Super Size Me Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition, and Health, Revised and Expanded Edition (California Studies in Food and Culture) Customer Reviews for: Fast Food Nation Rating - Very grateful to have been encouraged to read this book I was at a school-related conference (I work for a school district) and one part of it was led by a dietician. Her part lasted less than 30 minutes but during her discussion, she told the group to read this book if we wanted the real picture of how bad fast food is for children and the general public. She had shared some information that was very disturbing to me during her discussion so I was very curious about the book and went and bought it. The book is so thorough and clear (and disturbing) that I could not stop reading it. Every chapter contains information that I see as literally life-saving information. From reading ... Read More Rating - A Fine Social Thriller. Fast Food Nation is a fine "Social Thriller" bringing you to the edge of your seat right from beginning till the end. If "Erin Brockowich" is for P&G, then "Fast Food Nation" is for MacDonald's.Author has not spared a single stone unturned to make this book an "encyclopedia" of fast food "facts"( read evils) Going right into the production of raw materials,beef, french fries, potato farms, cattle feeds, workers apathy, production plants overseas, rules,legalities, food poisoning etc, Author has managed to bring the complete loop or lifecycle into this 300 pages "encyclopedia".Author has to commended for ... Read More Rating - Disappointing I'm a vegetarian who doesn't eat at fast-food restaurants. I thought this book was going to be an interesting expose of the fast-food industry. Instead, it was a series of meandering stories that weren't all that compelling. I got about halfway through the book and realized there was really no point in finishing it. I noticed that whenever someone was portayed negatively, the word "Republican" invariably cropped up. When one meatpacking company owner became less sympathetic to workers, Schlosser goes out of his way to let the reader know that he went from being a liberal Democrat to a conservative Republican. Read More see more reviews See all books by author Eric Schlosser

Books : Fast Food Nation