Schlosser then turns a critical eye toward the hot topic of globalization - a phenomenon launched by fast food.įAST FOOD NATION is a groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that may change the way America thinks about the way it eats. 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. He even ventures to England and Germany to clock the rate at which those countries are becoming fast food nations.Īlong 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 travels to Las Vegas for a giddily surreal franchisers' convention where Mikhail Gorbachev delivers the keynote address.

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. 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. 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. 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. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society. GDP: marijuana, migrant labor, and pornography. The book is a look at the three pillars of the underground economy of the United States, estimated by Schlosser to be ten percent of U.S. To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar Amerca. Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market is a book written by Eric Schlosser and published in 2003.

Eric schlosser books