National Culture

In 2011, amid the popular uprising against Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, the government sought in vain to shut down the Internet-based social networks of its people. WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange has been branded "public enemy number one" by some in the United States for posting material on the World Wide Web that concerns airstrikes in Iraq, US diplomatic communications, and other sensitive matters.

To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar America. 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. Fast Food Nation is a groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that may change the way America thinks about the way it eats.