Fast Food Nation
Subtitle: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
By: Eric Schlosser.
Edition: 6th printing
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Boston, USA
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 356
ISBN-13: 9780395977897
Copyright date: 2001
First sentence: CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN SITS on the eastern slope of Colorado's Front Range, rising steeply from the prairie and overlooking the city of Colorado Springs.
Description: 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.
(jacket)
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [330]-335) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction	  1; title: I. The American Way; title: 1.	The Founding Fathers	 13; title: 2.	Your Trusted Friends	 31; title: 3.	Behind the Counter	 59; title: 4.	Success	 91; title: II. Meat and Potatoes; title: 5.	Why the Fries Taste Good	111; title: 6.	On the Range	133; title: 7.	Cogs in the Great Machine	149; title: 8.	The Most Dangerous Job	169; title: 9.	What's in the Meat	193; title: 10.	Global Realization	225; title: Epilogue: Have It Your Way	255; title: Photo Credits	273; title: Notes	274; title: Bibliography	330; title: Acknowledgments	336; title: Index	339