Fast Food Nation
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 tro
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Fast Food Nation
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Eric Schlosser walks readers through the modern American fast food industry, the slaughterhouses and feedlots feeding it, the marketing aimed at kids, and the teenage workers behind the counter.
Yes. Fast Food Nation is Eric Schlosser's 2001 nonfiction investigation of the American fast-food industry, including labor practices, ranching, slaughterhouses, and the suburbanization of food. It draws on extensive original reporting.
Yes. Richard Linklater directed a 2006 fictional film adaptation, with Eric Schlosser co-writing. The film dramatizes the book's themes through invented characters rather than presenting the documentary content directly.
Fast Food Nation was written by Eric Schlosser, published in 2001 by Houghton Mifflin.
Fast Food Nation is 385 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Fast Food Nation takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
Fast Food Nation is a standalone novel by Eric Schlosser, not part of a series.
Fast Food Nation is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.