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Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom Hardcover – June 25, 2019
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“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.
- Print length288 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFlatiron Books
- Publication dateJune 25, 2019
- Dimensions5.79 x 1.17 x 8.52 inches
- ISBN-101250090725
- ISBN-13978-1250090720
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Editorial Reviews
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A Publishers Weekly Book of the Week
“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
"Drive-Thru Dreams is one of my favorite food books ever." ―Ed Levine, founder of Serious Eats
"Adam Chandler makes the case that our love for fast food is a defining part of American culture. I spent much of my childhood chasing Happy Meal toys and clamoring for Blizzards. If you did, too, this book’s for you." ― Brandon Canter, NPR
"Eminently readable, smart, and fascinating, Drive-Thru Dreams is, belying its subject matter, a full meal." ―Entertainment Weekly
"An entertaining treatise on how fast food has changed American culture, and been changed by it, Adam Chandler traces its history from the beginnings of White Castle to today." ―Business Insider
"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.... 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."
―Booklist, starred review
"The sprawling, silly, rigorous, empathetic pop history of fast food I've always wanted to read, executed more perfectly than I could have ever dreamed."
―Helen Rosner
"This book will completely change the way even the fiercest health advocate thinks about our nutritional landscape. There is no road to reform without understanding the ways fast food is woven into American history and culture, which Adam Chandler articulates brilliantly."
―James Hamblin, M.D., author of If Our Bodies Could Talk
"Driven by relentless curiosity, a sharp mind, and an honest affection for America’s fast food, Drive-Thru Dreams splits the difference between structural analysis and charming storytelling, and makes a compelling case that to understand fast food is to understand America. Whether chronicling the industry’s birth among rags-to-riches pioneers or tracing the startling symbiosis between social media and fast food sales, Chandler brings our understanding of fast food into the twenty-first century."
―Tracie McMillan, author of The American Way of Eating
"Drive-Thru Dreams creatively and playfully explores how fast food has shaped―and continues to shape―America, daring to posit that perhaps the relationship between Americans and its franchised food establishments has been mutually beneficial. We see how fast food can be both a great equalizer in American society and a source of strife and class differentiation. I couldn’t help but be inspired by Chandler’s thoughtful account of this uniquely American phenomenon."―Jeffrey Yoskowitz, co-author of The Gefilte Manifesto
"Drive-Thru Dreams is a key text to understanding the American love affair with fast food and the culture around it, including its economic impact and fandoms. This spicy and humorous narrative feels personal while writing the necessary chapter of what may be, for good or ill, some of America's most consumed chow. Brilliant and necessary."
―Michael Twitty, James Beard Award winning author of The Cooking Gene
"On the page, terrific writers know how to have their cake (or their Big Mac) and eat it, too. Adam Chandler is such a writer, and Drive-Thru Dreams, his account of the wild and inalienable wonderland of American fast food, gives us not just insight and history but a pleasure that is downright gustatory."
― Vijay Seshadri, Pulitzer Prize winning author of 3 Sections
"Adam Chandler puts the country on a griddle with his juicy defense of that much-maligned national obsession, fast food. It’s a delicious full-item, be-pickled feast of high calorie Americana―including dad jokes. What a book! I’m hungry!"
―Nicholas Dawidoff, author of The Catcher Was a Spy and The Crowd Sounds Happy
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Drive-Thru Dreams
A Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom
By Adam ChandlerFlatiron Books
Copyright © 2019 Adam ChandlerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-09072-0
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Epigraphs,
Introduction: The Fries That Bind,
1. The National Meal,
2. The Colonel,
3. Soft Market,
4. Freedom from Want,
5. Are We There Yet?,
6. Big Business,
7. Into the Cities,
8. "Yes, It Can Be Done",
9. Drive-Thru America,
10. Glasnost,
11. The Culinary Consciousness,
12. Crisp Digital Nuggets,
13. Belonging,
14. The Fast-Casual Frontier,
15. The Lonesome Hours,
Epilogue,
Acknowledgments,
Notes,
Index,
About the Author,
Copyright,
CHAPTER 1
THE NATIONAL MEAL
Proud Wichita! vain Wichita / cast the first stone!
— ALLEN GINSBERG
One day not long ago, a man named Pete Saari picked up his phone and cold-dialed 1-800-THE-CRAVE, the toll-free number for White Castle's headquarters in Columbus, Ohio. Saari, the CEO of a 3-D printing company based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, had been commissioned to create a personalized urn to host the eternal remains of Mel Burrows, a fifty-seven-year-old mother and motorcycle enthusiast who had lived in New Jersey. The concept for the urn included a replica of a White Castle slider — the fast-food chain's iconic and diminutive onion and bepickled hamburger. The slider would be nestled inside a rendering of a branded White Castle paper holster that would be set atop a model of a typical White Castle store, perching above the regal-looking decorative crenellated walls. To head off any potential legal catastrophes, Saari needed to get some permissions from White Castle.
The request eventually channeled its way up from the hotline to Jamie Richardson, the company's vice president, whose two decades at White Castle have not diminished his boyish, irrepressible devotion to the code of "the crave." "Literally, you hear some of these things and you can't dream it up," Richardson explained of Saari's proposal. "The first thought is, 'Is that real?'"
It turned out to be very real indeed. Richardson, after calling Saari back, ran the request over to White Castle's general counsel, who approved it right away. "We did not go through three weeks of wringing our hands and asking, 'Oh, does that send the right message? Will people think we're saying that fast food causes early demise? Think of the jokes,'" Richardson said. "No, we said, 'This is about celebrating someone's life.'"
It seems fair to say that, given the choice, many people would rather go directly to hell for eternity than spend their corporeal afterlife in the confines of a White Castle–themed urn. However, when Mel Burrows was diagnosed with her terminal illness, the burger joint became an unexpected fixture in her life. Following Mel's treatments, her sister Stacey would sneak her out of the hospital and, in the perfect act of sororal mischief, the two would steal away to the nearby White Castle. This intimate convention would include conversation and the ceremonial eating of sliders — objects that are themselves physically designed to be tiny reprieves from the world. The motto of their outings until Mel's death became "Let's treat ourselves," which would eventually be featured in large script on the memorial urn produced by Saari. "It might seem a bit silly to some people, but White Castle provided a sense of normalcy during Mel's treatments," her sister explained. "And that was a true gift."
Millions of people eat hamburgers each day, most of the time for much less significant reasons than did Mel and Stacey, but the experiences of these millions are all improbably linked to White Castle and a fry cook named Walt Anderson. And the story of fast food itself also begins with White Castle, in Wichita, Kansas.
* * *
Wichita is an unsung, uniquely American city that should hold Mount Rushmore–esque significance in the national imagination. It's the city that gave the world Cessna and Boeing, the Koch brothers, Hattie McDaniel, James Reeb, and Barack Obama's mother, Ann Dunham. Hank Ketcham, the creator of Dennis the Menace, lived his life on the West Coast but set his comic strip about anodyne mischief in Wichita because it embodies a wholesome American idyll, the place for Jack White to disappear, one of the few US cities where the water isn't fluoridated and where it's illegal to serve cherry pie à la mode on a Sunday.
But none of that is why Wichita truly deserves prime billing in our collective whimsy. Wichita effectively endowed the United States with its secular wafer — the hamburger. Americans might think of the burger as a national birthright, but a century ago, the only thing less popular than ground beef in the United States was the Irish. In 1906, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a novel about the trials of an immigrant worker, partially set in the waste-filled animal stockyards of Chicago. That might not sound like a page-turner, but as your high school English teacher probably told you, the book was a crucial catalyst for the reforms and regulations of the Progressive Era. Sinclair's lurid and all-but-unprintable descriptions of factories with spoiling meat pushed the public to think about food safety and meat and pressured the government to act.* And, as a result, US consumers would be wary of ground beef for many years to come with authorities on food and dining like Duncan Hines warning their readers about the perils of hamburgers in particular well into the 1930s.
Against this queasy backdrop, in 1916, Walt Anderson first performed the magical, calculated act of crafting tiny ground beef patties and then smashing them flat onto a steaming, onion-laced griddle. Anderson had found meatballs not only stuck to the griddle, but took too long to make; his variation was small, juicy, greasy, quickly made to order, thoroughly cooked through, and came encased in specialty buns instead of bread. They were eventually called sliders; they were delicious, and Anderson sold them cheaply for a nickel a pop at his three-stool hamburger stand in Wichita, buying his first day's provisions of beef and bread on credit and walking away with $3.75 in profits.
What helped Anderson quickly make converts wasn't just his innovative food. To quell the stubborn meta-beefs of the time and to reassure customers that the meat was fresh, Anderson made a public display of grinding fresh meat and then griddling it in a clean cooking space, all in full view of everyone. "Buy 'em by the sack," his slogan implored. Like Thomas Edison crooning "Mary Had a Little Lamb" into his phonograph forty years earlier, Anderson's undersized invention would lay the foundation for an entire industry and create the standard for a product that would become synonymous worldwide with the United States.
Though many a grillman from Texas to Wisconsin to Connecticut has passionately claimed authorship of the invention, in many ways Wichita is the most spiritually sound point of origin for the American hamburger and its world-conquering legacy. In the years following the Civil War, the surrounding Great Plains spawned countless national mythologies of noble, rough-hewn cowboys and happy yeomen settling the wild frontier in the name of American progress, Manifest Destiny, intermittent ethnic cleansing, and rugged self-reliance. As we know from westerns, the enduring images of this era are incomplete without their associations to beef; after all, the men heroically gunning up the trails weren't just pioneers, but often mercenaries driving cattle from Texas ranches to Kansas cow towns. From there, the cattle would be shipped north to the very Chicago stockyards that The Jungle later decried and then sent east in newly invented refrigerated railroad cars to cheaply feed the growing country as it undertook the Industrial Revolution. Both the meat and the folk tales of heroic exploits undertaken in the Great American Desert were devoured with equal enthusiasm wherever they went.
Following the end of World War I though, new tech-centric fascinations emerged. Industrialization and urbanization reinforced each other across the United States as electricity grew more commonplace, buildings grew taller, and lighting incandesced with greater sophistication. Higher-paying manufacturing jobs brought masses into the cities, which themselves were full of new excitement — burgeoning culture and cheap entertainment, lunchrooms and diners. While out on the farms, mules and horses were being replaced by tractors and steam engines, the smirking sentiments of the famous 1919 vaudeville jam "How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree?)" would be confirmed by the 1920 US Census, which showed more Americans living in urban areas than rural ones for the first time ever.
The city of Wichita in particular grew, and Anderson's nickel sliders drew a working-class clientele, often from nearby factories, and his expansion to two more stands would dovetail with a Kansas oil boom that swelled the city's population. Anderson's culinary innovation might have remained a Wichita-specific specialty had he not crossed paths while opening his fourth stand with a real-estate broker named Billy Ingram in 1921. Ingram, a natural-born marketeer in the hyperbolic booster mold of the 1920s, immediately fell in love with Anderson's operation. Ingram became Anderson's partner, personally guaranteeing the loan on the new stand. To combat the persisting stigmas associated with ground beef and gain ground on Wichita's sudden herd of multiplying burger stands, Ingram suggested that the name of the next outpost convey both stateliness and cleanliness: White Castle. (Of course, it helped that the building they found already looked like a small castle.)
In his book Orange Roofs, Golden Arches, Philip Langdon credits White Castle with being the first chain to standardize the look and feel of its stores as they opened and blossomed within Kansas and without. White Castles spread to Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, and, eventually, Detroit, Chicago, Newark, and New York City. In each store, the walls and interiors were painted and maintained a spotless, sparkling white, and the counters were outfitted in shiny Allegheny metal, later known as stainless steel. A White Castle brochure from 1932 conveys how this credo extended to the customer experience:
When you sit in a White Castle, remember that you are one of several thousands; you are sitting on the same kind of stool; you are being served on the same kind of counter; the coffee you drink is made in accordance with a certain formula; the hamburger you eat is prepared in exactly the same way over a gas flame of the same intensity; the cups you drink from are identical with thousands of cups that thousands of other people are using at the same moment; the same standard of cleanliness protects your food. ... Even the men who serve you are guided by standards of precision which have been thought out from beginning to end. They dress alike; they are motivated by the same principles of courtesy.
Today, this patriarchal call for conformity would read like Soviet agitprop or a passage from a dystopian novel. But for consumers that had been scarred by The Jungle's depictions of boil-covered steers and for a country with no uniform health code, the consistency and sameness offered by White Castle signaled virtue and trustworthiness. In the ways that seasonal fare and organic provenance have become largely cosmetic lures nearly a hundred years later, the blueprint of the fast-food industry was set on the premise of predictability and technical precision. And so, decades before McDonald's and the hulking burger chains would arrive on the scene, White Castle offered comfort and reassurance by committing itself to the then-revolutionary task of delivering customers the exact same experience every single time. This extended from the shape and layout of stores across the Plains, the Midwest, and the Northeast down to the size and preparation of the sliders, which were delivered by servers in the same sharp, spotless white uniforms and who conformed to the standards of a rigorous twenty-four-point checklist that included exhortations like "correct bad breath," "have clean shave," and "be prepared to speak pleasantly."
White Castle's neurotic quest to provide identical experiences wasn't just a strategic gambit. It embodied the zeitgeist of the 1920s Machine Age, in which many cherished ideals centered around business and the novelties of technology and efficiency. Even more celebrated than his bigotry was Henry Ford's assembly line, which whet the national appetite for mass-produced products in a decade remembered well for its conspicuous consumption. A Model T cost a prohibitive $825 in 1909. By 1921, aided by the speedier, progressive assembly process, the price had dropped to a more approachable-to-the-masses $310. The country was high on haste, illegal whiskey, efficiency, and the cost-effectiveness of regimented sameness.
White Castle nickel sliders were both of the people and innovative, too. Early on, Walt Anderson discovered that shaping his burger patties in tiny squares and mashing them flat with a spatula would allow them to cook quicker and more evenly while locking in flavor. The process also made effective use of every possible inch of the griddle. No less groundbreaking was the choice of a bun, which, unlike bread, absorbed the juiciness of the beef and allowed the center to hold. Like the high axles on a lightweight Tin Lizzie, the specialty bun made the burger portable and sturdy at the very moment the country began to move around for leisure. Between 1915 and 1920, as the hamburger was just starting its journey into the mainstream, the number of cars on American roads jumped from 2.5 million to 9 million. By 1931, 23 million cars would be on the roads. As the country further oriented itself around its cars, a roadside culinary movement fashioned on speed coalesced along with it, but more on that later.
* * *
In countless ways, White Castle lowered the drawbridge for American fast food. It had an operations playbook, an assembly-line system, and quickly inspired a shameless slew of regal- and sterile-sounding imitators across the United States — Royal Castle, Blue Castle, Silver Castle, Krystal (as in clear), White Clock, White Tower, White Mana, White Cabin, White Turret, White Fortress, White Rose, White Diamond, and so on and so forth. Led by Ingram, who later bought out Anderson, White Castle would experiment with newspaper coupons and bring facets of its production — from food to construction materials to paper goods — in-house to maintain control and reduce costs. Eventually, in the most basic pursuit of uniformity, the burgers would shift from fresh beef to frozen pucks. But by then, the country would already be hooked.
Ingram also shrewdly understood that to flourish meant luring middle-class families into the ranks of the White Castle faithful, particularly after the Great Depression diminished his working-class clientele. In 1932, around the time Aunt Sammy, the USDA-devised matronly better half of Uncle Sam, was dishing out questionable nutritional advice and recipes to homemakers on the radio five days a week on hundreds of stations across the country, Ingram hired a dynamic saleswoman named Ella Louise Agniel to play "Julia Joyce," a corporate hostess who would preach the gospel of White Castle to the same demographic.
In his 1997 book, Selling 'Em by the Sack, David Gerard Hogan details how Joyce, forged partially in the image of General Mills' own fictitious shill, Betty Crocker, would appear at women's groups around the country as a White Castle emissary armed with bags of sliders along with talking points about the nutritional merits of hamburgers and the time and effort they'd save in the kitchen. Inevitably, Joyce would drag her guests to drop in on a nearby White Castle restaurant, where they would marvel at its clean, orderly, and high-tech operation. As Agniel's efforts proved out, she quickly rose to become a trusted voice and high-level figure in the White Castle hierarchy. "By the end of the decade it was not unusual to see businessmen and housewives standing in line next to construction workers, policemen, and taxi drivers," notes Hogan. And so, White Castle managed to sell nearly twice as many burgers in 1937 as it did in 1930.
But as dazzling as all these feats were, White Castle's greatest contribution remains the rise and redemption of the hamburger, which forever changed the country and the world. Prior to World War I, with its bloodthirsty nationalist chanteys, the United States was a physically and spiritually disconnected land. Little, if anything, would qualify as quintessentially American in a country where different languages, cuisines, and forms of entertainment held the knit of ethnic enclaves and immigrant communities. Without a drop of legal booze, the gaze was nationalized during the Roaring Twenties and made this tribalism seem provincial. Americans started to see the same films and tuned in to the same radio shows, drove their Model Ts, and lived in cities as a majority for the first time ever. Soon they wanted the same gyrating washing machines and the same electric refrigerators and Radiolas from the same national department stores. They wanted to load their pantries with national brands like Wonder Bread, Cream of Wheat, and Minute tapioca from the very same grocery aisles. And they wanted the hamburger, a thoroughly modern sandwich that came enciphered with humankind's evolutionary longing for fire-cooked meat.
(Continues...)Excerpted from Drive-Thru Dreams by Adam Chandler. Copyright © 2019 Adam Chandler. Excerpted by permission of Flatiron Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Flatiron Books (June 25, 2019)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1250090725
- ISBN-13 : 978-1250090720
- Item Weight : 12.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.79 x 1.17 x 8.52 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #745,471 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #226 in Restaurant & Food Industry (Books)
- #676 in Hospitality, Travel & Tourism (Books)
- #11,833 in U.S. State & Local History
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About the author

Adam Chandler is a journalist and author based in New York. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, WIRED, Vox, Slate, New York Magazine, Texas Monthly, Esquire, TIME, and elsewhere. Chandler is the author of Drive-Thru Dreams (2019) and 99% Perspiration (2025).
Previously, Chandler served as a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covered business, culture, politics, and foreign affairs. In addition to stints at start-ups, non-profits, and in publishing, Chandler also tended bar for six years at The Brandy Library, Fresh Salt, Lexington Bar & Books, and West 3rd Common. (He has been generously credited with introducing at least two patrons to their future spouses.)
He has appeared across television, radio, and digital platforms including five seasons of The History Channel’s The Food That Built America as well as Modern Marvels, The Today Show, Hardball, CBS Sunday Morning, National Geographic’s The ‘80s, BBC’s World News America and Context, and NPR’s Morning Edition, Planet Money, 1A, and On Point. Chandler grew up in Houston, Texas, and is a graduate of George Washington University and the MFA Creative Nonfiction Program at Sarah Lawrence College. At least one of his stories has been mocked during a live New York Mets broadcast.
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book informative and interesting, with fresh insights into fast food history and culture. They describe it as a great, fun read with a thoughtful writing style that is witty without being unserious. The pacing is described as captivating and delightful.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book informative and interesting. They say it provides a fascinating look into the world of fast food, using food as a great way to discuss history and culture. The book is well-written and engaging, with fresh insights and familiar observations. It offers a scholarly yet affectionate look at American history told through fast food chains.
"...artfully defy my dispositions, presenting a broad and balanced view of the fast-food landscape, and more crucially its relevance in our national..." Read more
"Good stories about fast food and drive thru icons and how they got started...." Read more
"This book is a joy to read. This is a fascinating dive into the world of fast food, and I've enjoyed every page of it...." Read more
"...away by the way Mr. Chandler is able to not only share incredibly interesting stories and tie it back into the social fabric of the country and it's..." Read more
Customers find the book easy to read. They describe it as a great summer read with an engaging writing style and delightful pace.
"...Damn fine book. Highly recommended." Read more
"This book is a joy to read. This is a fascinating dive into the world of fast food, and I've enjoyed every page of it...." Read more
"...country and it's history but do so in a way that is captivating, entertaining, and incredibly funny." Read more
"...John Grisham 3)Adam Chandler This is a great book and Mr. Chandler’s witty and thoughtful writing style lend to a superb and..." Read more
Customers enjoy the book's humor. They find the writing style witty and thoughtful, making it funny without being unserious or too clever. The personal and poetic tone runs through the book.
"...ease between modes historical, anthropological, personal, and poetic- with his waggish humor running through it all. Damn fine book...." Read more
"...history but do so in a way that is captivating, entertaining, and incredibly funny." Read more
"...Adam Chandler This is a great book and Mr. Chandler’s witty and thoughtful writing style lend to a superb and delightful pace...." Read more
"...Funny without being unserious, smart without being too clever, Drive-Thru Dreams is one of the better nonfiction books I've read in recent years...." Read more
Customers find the book's pacing engaging. They describe it as an informative and entertaining look at the fast food empire. The author provides a unique perspective on compelling figures who helped transform fast food. The writing is described as lively, with wit and fresh insights.
"...But this book managed to artfully defy my dispositions, presenting a broad and balanced view of the fast-food landscape, and more crucially its..." Read more
"...fabric of the country and it's history but do so in a way that is captivating, entertaining, and incredibly funny." Read more
"A scholarly but affectionate look at America's -- and by extension the world's -- favourite treat. (But I feel the book could have been longer.)" Read more
"Drive-Thru Dreams is a terrific book. It's an informative and entertaining look at the empire of Fast Food which, despite its international reach,..." Read more
Reviews with images
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YUMMY BOOK❣️📚
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2019I've never been particularly attracted to fast-food, either as the focus of books and documentaries, or as a dietary staple (readers inclined in any of the above directions will be richly rewarded.) But this book managed to artfully defy my dispositions, presenting a broad and balanced view of the fast-food landscape, and more crucially its relevance in our national fabric- for eaters of all culinary stripes. And I may never have bought in to the subject matter in the hands of another author. Chandler's writing sizzles with wit, verve, fresh insights, and familiar observations freshly turned. He shifts with stylistic ease between modes historical, anthropological, personal, and poetic- with his waggish humor running through it all. Damn fine book. Highly recommended.
- Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2023Good stories about fast food and drive thru icons and how they got started. Follow these iconic joints through the years and across the world and learn the impact they have on all.
- Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2023This book is a joy to read. This is a fascinating dive into the world of fast food, and I've enjoyed every page of it.
I'm just sad that the book ends.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2024The fast food part was great but the leftist ideology and negative American tone should have been left out.
- Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2019Great summer read! Came in with mixed expectations but was absolutely blown away by the way Mr. Chandler is able to not only share incredibly interesting stories and tie it back into the social fabric of the country and it's history but do so in a way that is captivating, entertaining, and incredibly funny.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2022For me, the ultimate treat as a kid was a McDonald’s Happy Meal. Even for my children, the ultimate treat is a McDonald’s Happy Meal.
Toy aside, the allure of McDonald’s was its consistency. No matter where you went, it tasted the same. It was always delicious.
Now, is it good for me? Absolutely not. But that’s kind of the point. It’s a guilty pleasure. If you want something healthy, you do not get fast food.
This book not only recounts the history of America’s greatest fast food chains, it also conveys how fast food shaped America and how America shaped fast food.
Fast food history is unquestionably American history. Fast food is more American than apple pie (unless it’s one of those apple pies from McDonald’s).
I wish the book took a more linear approach instead of bouncing between corporations, but it is clear that fast food did not originate from a single place. It was created throughout the country. Over time, with the interstate highways connecting the country, fast food connected us all.
- Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 20191)Danielle Steele
2)C.S. Lewis
3)John Grisham
3)Adam Chandler
This is a great book and Mr. Chandler’s witty and thoughtful writing style lend to a superb and delightful pace. Fast food unites Americans in a special way, with fond childhood memories of Big Macs, Whoppers and french fries - and Adam captures that (and the history behind it) brilliantly in Drive Thru Dreams. Grab a milkshake (or Frosty), put on a baseball game, and read this book.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2020I love food history and this quickly became one of my favorites on the topic. It talked about the influence society had on the fast food industry as well as provided detailed information on the founders of popular chains and how they got started. It covers a lot but is presented in a way that you don't feel overwhelmed with information. great book