Drive-thru dreams : a journey through the heart of America's fast-food kingdom

Format:

Book

Title:

Drive-thru dreams : a journey through the heart of America's fast-food kingdom

Author:

Chandler, Adam author

ISBN:

9781250090720

Edition:

First edition.

Publication:

New York : Flatiron Books, 2019.

Physical Description:

276 pages ; 22 cm

Contents:

The national meal -- The Colonel -- Soft market -- Freedom from want -- Are we there yet? -- Poultry in motion -- Into the cities -- "Yes, it can be done" -- Drive-thru America -- Glasnost -- Good places -- Crisp digital nuggets -- Belonging -- The fast casual frontier -- The lonesome hours.

Summary:

"Most any honest person can own up to harboring at least one fast-food guilty pleasure. In Drive-Thru Dreams, Adam Chandler explores the inseparable link between fast food and American life for the past century. The dark underbelly of the industry's largest players has long been scrutinized and gutted, characterized as impersonal, greedy, corporate, and worse. But, in unexpected ways, fast food is also deeply personal and emblematic of a larger than life image of America. With wit and nuance, Chandler reveals the complexities of this industry through heartfelt anecdotes and fascinating trivia as well as interviews with fans, executives, and workers. He traces the industry from its roots in Wichita, where White Castle became the first fast food chain in 1921 and successfully branded the hamburger as the official all-American meal, to a teenager's 2017 plea for a year's supply of Wendy's chicken nuggets, which united the internet to generate the most viral tweet of all time. Drive-Thru Dreams by Adam Chandler tells an intimate and contemporary story of America--its humble beginning, its innovations and failures, its international charisma, and its regional identities--through its beloved roadside fare."--Publisher's website.

Chandler explores the inseparable link between fast food and American life for the past century. He finds that, in unexpected ways, fast food is deeply personal and emblematic of a larger than life image of America. Tracing the industry from its roots in Wichita, where White Castle became the first fast food chain in 1921 and successfully branded the hamburger as the official all-American meal, Chandler tells of humble beginnings, innovations and failures, international charisma, and regional identities-- a contemporary history of America through its beloved roadside fare. -- adapted from jacket

Subject(s):

Fast food restaurants -- United States.

United States -- Social life and customs.

Geographic Term:

United States -- Social life and customs.

United States.

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... McMinnville Public Library	647.95 Chandler	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Salem Main Library	647.9573 Chandler 2019	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

"This is a book to savor, especially if you're a fast-food fan."-- Bookpage

"This fun, argumentative, and frequently surprising pop history of American fast food will thrill and educate food lovers of all speeds."
-- Publishers Weekly

Most any honest person can own up to harboring at least one fast-food guilty pleasure. In Drive-Thru Dreams, Adam Chandler explores the inseparable link between fast food and American life for the past century. The dark underbelly of the industry's largest players has long been scrutinized and gutted, characterized as impersonal, greedy, corporate, and worse. But, in unexpected ways, fast food is also deeply personal and emblematic of a larger than life image of America.

With wit and nuance, Chandler reveals the complexities of this industry through heartfelt anecdotes and fascinating trivia as well as interviews with fans, executives, and workers. He traces the industry from its roots in Wichita, where White Castle became the first fast food chain in 1921 and successfully branded the hamburger as the official all-American meal, to a teenager's 2017 plea for a year's supply of Wendy's chicken nuggets, which united the internet to generate the most viral tweet of all time.

Drive-Thru Dreams by Adam Chandler tells an intimate and contemporary story of America--its humble beginning, its innovations and failures, its international charisma, and its regional identities--through its beloved roadside fare.

Author Notes

ADAM CHANDLER is a writer based in Brooklyn. A former staff writer at The Atlantic, his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Texas Monthly, New York Magazine, Slate, Esquire, and elsewhere. Drive-Thru Dreams is his debut book.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Everybody, "no matter how refined the palate or how anointed the social status," has a fast food pleasure, freelance writer Chandler states in his perceptive cultural history of the restaurants he identifies as a quintessentially American innovation. The book begins in a flurry of vivid portraiture of the genre's titanic innovators. These tales of larger-than-life individuals-including the cussing-and-cooking "ham who served chicken" caricature Harlan Sanders (Kentucky Fried Chicken) and the famously "cruel" yet meticulously meritocratic Ray Kroc (McDonald's)-start as glorious capitalist pirate tales but end with those idiosyncratic visions being "swallowed up by the burgeoning corporate state." Chandler shows how the democratic spread of cheap, fast food reflects different periods in American history, from the prewar Upton Sinclair-inspired push for clean industrialized dining, to the postwar sprawl of prosperous highway-linked suburbs, and ultimately to the current divide over "interpretations of purity" in what constitutes healthy fast food. He throws cold water on the idea that "fast casual" eateries such as Chipotle are anything new, pointing out that their clean-looking aesthetic just harkens back to the industrial appeal of hamburger restaurants such as White Castle. This fun, argumentative, and frequently surprising pop history of American fast food will thrill and educate food lovers of all speeds. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Ubiquitous though fast food restaurants have become across the American landscape, their popularity doesn't shield them from opprobrium from nutritionists and other detractors, who blame these establishments for a host of ills from America's obesity health crisis to the destruction of landscapes and even the general decline of table manners. But before anyone casts judgment upon fast food, Chandler asks readers to take a much closer look at all the outcomes and influences of this industry, how these businesses both provide employment and act as equalizing venues of social interaction. Fast food's transformative power extends worldwide, to the point that KFC has turned Christmas into a major holiday in non-Christian Japan. White Castle, the original burger joint, was founded in part to deflect Americans' wariness of ground meat after the revelations of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1904). In Chandler's version of the narrative, these corporate behemoths are still made up of people. He shares a host of anecdotes about some ever-fascinating individuals, from servers to CEO's perhaps most notably in the tale of delicious vengeance by Aslam Khan, once spurned for a job at Church's Fried Chicken and later hired as an executive for the company.--Mark Knoblauch Copyright 2019 Booklist