Fast Food Nation

The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

By: Eric Schlosser

Narrated by: Rick Adamson

Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

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 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.

Fast Food Nation is a groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that may change the way America thinks about the way it eats.

©2001 by Eric Schlosser
(P)2001 Random House, Inc.
Random House Audible, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

• Book Sense Book of the Year Award Finalist, Adult Non-Fiction, 2002

"... a fierce indictment of the fast food industry." (The New York Times)

Interesting and disturbing

Great book, I can't believe how corrupt people can be.

You'll want use this as a reference...

Any additional comments?

Everything you suspected but didn't have the data to substantiate. The data is here!

An Essential Read

This work is an essential read to understanding both the strengths and weaknesses of this quintessential American industry. There is a dark underbelly to Happy Meals and Bacon Western Cheeseburgers, and it is weirder and more brutish than you can imagine. Even from the perspective of a conservative Republican like myself, this industry is badly in need of reform.

food revolution

It's a book that should be part of our mandatory reading programs in middle and/or high schools. If industries are allowed to advertise to children then our children should be armed with information to protect themselves.

Skipped a bunch of stuff

The reader skipped a lot of the book, sometimes entire paragraphs! Very frustrating!!! Needed this for school

Why is it missing parts?

This is not the whole book, and the reading is too dramatic. The research presented is interesting, though.

Still excellent

I got the book when it was first published and loved it that was about 20 years ago still just as good- I’d love a sequel

Narration style is bizarre!

The narration style is very distracting. Every sentence is inflected as if it were the MOST AMAZING THING EVER! This narrator would do wonderfully with stories about unicorns and magical lands. Social commentary, not so much.

The text itself is great, though.

Perfect Audiobook

This is the type of book you would never be able to read cover to cover because it is so long. Listening to it in chunks is a perfect way to get through all the points.

I expected something similiar to the documetary "SuperSize Me" but got instead an enlightening/entertaining history of the fast food giants. I loved the drama and the personal touches of the success stories of how the work of a few innovative men could affect the lives of billions.

Instead of harping about the poor nutrional value of fast food, the author instead focuses on the risk of food born illnesses from contaminents like E Coli, a concern supported by CDC statistics. This book is a modern day "The Jungle."

You will be glad you read this book if you have any interest in sociology and/or health and nutrition. Docudrama at its best!!!

Informative

Anyone interested in the food that we consume should read this book. Not only does he give a great history of the fast food industry, but health, safety and other issues are brought into topic.