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Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America
An award-winning journalist investigates Amazon’s impact on the wealth and poverty of towns and cities across the United States.
In 1937, the famed writer and activist Upton Sinclair published a novel bearing the subtitle A Story of Ford-America. He blasted the callousness of a company worth “a billion dollars” that underpaid its workers while forcing them to engage in repetitive and sometimes dangerous assembly line labor. Eighty-three years later, the market capitalization of Amazon com has exceeded one trillion dollars, while the value of the Ford Motor Company hovers around thirty billion. We have, it seems, entered the age of one-click America—and as the coronavirus makes Americans more dependent on online shopping, its sway will only intensify.
Alec MacGillis’s Fulfillment is not another inside account or exposé of our most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that falls within that company’s growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon’s sprawling network of delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated.
Ranging across the country, MacGillis tells the stories of those who’ve thrived and struggled to thrive in this rapidly changing environment. In Seattle, high-paid workers in new office towers displace a historic black neighborhood. In suburban Virginia, homeowners try to protect their neighborhood from the environmental impact of a new data center. Meanwhile, in El Paso, small office supply firms seek to weather Amazon’s takeover of government procurement, and in Baltimore a warehouse supplants a fabled steel plant. Fulfillment also shows how Amazon has become a force in Washington, DC, ushering readers through a revolving door for lobbyists and government contractors and into CEO Jeff Bezos’s lavish Kalorama mansion.
With empathy and breadth, MacGillis demonstrates the hidden human costs of the other inequality—not the growing gap between rich and poor, but the gap between the country’s winning and losing regions. The result is an intimate account of contemporary capitalism: its drive to innovate, its dark, pitiless magic, its remaking of America with every click.
In 1937, the famed writer and activist Upton Sinclair published a novel bearing the subtitle A Story of Ford-America. He blasted the callousness of a company worth “a billion dollars” that underpaid its workers while forcing them to engage in repetitive and sometimes dangerous assembly line labor. Eighty-three years later, the market capitalization of Amazon com has exceeded one trillion dollars, while the value of the Ford Motor Company hovers around thirty billion. We have, it seems, entered the age of one-click America—and as the coronavirus makes Americans more dependent on online shopping, its sway will only intensify.
Alec MacGillis’s Fulfillment is not another inside account or exposé of our most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that falls within that company’s growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon’s sprawling network of delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated.
Ranging across the country, MacGillis tells the stories of those who’ve thrived and struggled to thrive in this rapidly changing environment. In Seattle, high-paid workers in new office towers displace a historic black neighborhood. In suburban Virginia, homeowners try to protect their neighborhood from the environmental impact of a new data center. Meanwhile, in El Paso, small office supply firms seek to weather Amazon’s takeover of government procurement, and in Baltimore a warehouse supplants a fabled steel plant. Fulfillment also shows how Amazon has become a force in Washington, DC, ushering readers through a revolving door for lobbyists and government contractors and into CEO Jeff Bezos’s lavish Kalorama mansion.
With empathy and breadth, MacGillis demonstrates the hidden human costs of the other inequality—not the growing gap between rich and poor, but the gap between the country’s winning and losing regions. The result is an intimate account of contemporary capitalism: its drive to innovate, its dark, pitiless magic, its remaking of America with every click.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published March 16, 2021
359 people are currently reading
6877 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 376 reviews
November 6, 2020
Amazon is a monster, if only just in size. There are numerous books and papers examining its labor practices, union bashing, seller abuses, platform monopoly tactics, and its effects on all other retail. Alec Macgillis’ book Fulfillment is different. It follows the lives of a handful of Americans, mostly working class, some of whom never intersect Amazon at all. But readers won’t know that until they’ve read their whole life story. One or two come back a hundred pages later – to work at an Amazon warehouse that has changed the face of their community. But some don’t. I can’t really say what the point of it is.
Throughout the book, there are droppings of dramatic facts, but they are usually not explored beyond the simple statement of them:
-Sellers on Amazon had great difficulty paying 15% for the privilege. That 15% was usually more than their entire profit margin. Today, Amazon’s fees amount to more like 27%.
-Amazon has a code of Leadership Principles. Prominent among them: “Leaders are tenacious and have conviction. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion.”
-One Amazon warehouse worker in 10 in Ohio is on food stamps, and Amazon ranks in the top five of employers whose staff is on food stamps in at least five states.
-Amazon is responsible for the destruction of about 76,000 retail jobs – every year.
-Warehouse accidents at Amazon are twice the national average.
But Macgillis doesn’t weigh those statements. That’s not what the book is about. Macgillis barely mentions antitrust, Congressional hearings, union organizing, copying hot selling products and selling them itself, or putting “interior competitors” (outside sellers on the site) out of business. It is instead a series of biographies, down to extraordinary personal and trivial detail, almost none of which is relevant to working at Amazon. Their jobs are unsatisfying, short term, and low-paying. It’s no different at Amazon warehouses. People in dire straits have difficulties in relationships, difficulties with their health, and of course difficulties with money. Amazon has little or nothing to do with it.
There is a puzzling amount of nostalgia for the good days of Bethlehem Steel’s operations in the Baltimore area (now occupied by Amazon operations). There is a great deal of nostalgia for working at family-owned department stores, (now history). Readers might to connect that to Amazon employment conditions today, but really, there is no connection. Macgillis doesn’t force the connection either. Times are different. Working conditions are different, and not just at Amazon warehouses. The purpose it serves in the book is never clear.
The title, Fulfillment, has many meanings in this context. Fulfilled orders, fulfilled lives, or even a fulfilled dump of the evidence condemning Amazon. But the book doesn’t fulfill any of them. At this level, it is too clever by half. It isn’t fulfilling.
The book concludes with a Baltimore drug dealer taking a job at an Amazon warehouse, because the pandemic closed the stores his customers used to steal things from. At the age of 33, this was his first real job.
The end.
David Wineberg
Throughout the book, there are droppings of dramatic facts, but they are usually not explored beyond the simple statement of them:
-Sellers on Amazon had great difficulty paying 15% for the privilege. That 15% was usually more than their entire profit margin. Today, Amazon’s fees amount to more like 27%.
-Amazon has a code of Leadership Principles. Prominent among them: “Leaders are tenacious and have conviction. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion.”
-One Amazon warehouse worker in 10 in Ohio is on food stamps, and Amazon ranks in the top five of employers whose staff is on food stamps in at least five states.
-Amazon is responsible for the destruction of about 76,000 retail jobs – every year.
-Warehouse accidents at Amazon are twice the national average.
But Macgillis doesn’t weigh those statements. That’s not what the book is about. Macgillis barely mentions antitrust, Congressional hearings, union organizing, copying hot selling products and selling them itself, or putting “interior competitors” (outside sellers on the site) out of business. It is instead a series of biographies, down to extraordinary personal and trivial detail, almost none of which is relevant to working at Amazon. Their jobs are unsatisfying, short term, and low-paying. It’s no different at Amazon warehouses. People in dire straits have difficulties in relationships, difficulties with their health, and of course difficulties with money. Amazon has little or nothing to do with it.
There is a puzzling amount of nostalgia for the good days of Bethlehem Steel’s operations in the Baltimore area (now occupied by Amazon operations). There is a great deal of nostalgia for working at family-owned department stores, (now history). Readers might to connect that to Amazon employment conditions today, but really, there is no connection. Macgillis doesn’t force the connection either. Times are different. Working conditions are different, and not just at Amazon warehouses. The purpose it serves in the book is never clear.
The title, Fulfillment, has many meanings in this context. Fulfilled orders, fulfilled lives, or even a fulfilled dump of the evidence condemning Amazon. But the book doesn’t fulfill any of them. At this level, it is too clever by half. It isn’t fulfilling.
The book concludes with a Baltimore drug dealer taking a job at an Amazon warehouse, because the pandemic closed the stores his customers used to steal things from. At the age of 33, this was his first real job.
The end.
David Wineberg
November 25, 2020
Amazon's Long Shadow. This book seeks to show the America that was, and the America that is in the Age of Amazon and how the former became the latter. And in that goal, it actually does remarkably well. Sprinkling case study after case study after case study with history, political science, and social science, this book truly does a remarkable job of showing the changing reality of living and working in an America that has gone from hyper local business to one of hyper global - and the giant blue smiley swoosh that has accompanied much of this transition over the last 2o years in particular. Very much a literary style work, this perhaps won't work for those looking for a more in-depth attack on Amazon, nor will it really work for those looking for a true in-depth look at Amazon's specific practices. But it does serve as a solid work of showing many of Amazon's overall tactics and how they are both the result of change and the precipice of other change. Very much recommended.
April 3, 2021
I've probably read most of Alec MacGillis' work for the past decade, and much of what's here feels familiar, with the Amazon throughline layered on. In a way the book is a victim of the author's success - his deep reporting in Baltimore and Dayton was already known to me. The uninitiated reader will get a lot more out of the project to locate Amazon within the trend of regional inequality in the United States. It fits together well, and while sometimes the book is a bit too sprawling in its effort to connect everything back to the Amazon story, for the most part the connections are warranted and clear. This is quite an achievement and something policymakers should internalize.
May 5, 2022
Amazon és aquella botiga virtual en la que hi busqueu qualsevol cosa i ho tenen, no cal comprar enlloc més. Bé, també us ofereix una plataforma de continguts audiovisuals. Ah, i el llibre electrònic més popular, amb títols infinits. I és clar, si us cal espai al núvol, també us en venen. Heu mirat a qui pertany el vostre goodreads?
És difícil imaginar la magnitud d'aquest gegant que és Amazon, l'empresa de l'home més ric del món. I encara és més difícil comprendre les xifres delirants que mou aquest negoci. Però la pregunta que ens hem de fer no és tant el què, sinó el com han aconseguit muntar un imperi que ho domina tot i que ha provocat profunds canvis socioeconòmics als EUA de les darreres dècades.
Alec MacGillis no ens explica només els motius de l'èxit fulgurant d'Amazon (i altres), sobretot ens n'explica les conseqüències. De com una empresa que ho arrasa tot i que s'ha servit d'incentius públics per prosperar, ha accentuat la desigualtat social i ha canviat la percepció del comerç, dels drets laborals i socials, ha provocat gentrificació amb cada nova seu establerta, ha devastat famílies i ha empitjorat xacres com el sensellarisme, l'addicció als opiacis i els problemes de salut mental.
Si hi busqueu només un treball que critiqui Amazon i us digui que és el dimoni escuat, aquest llibre s'us farà llarg i carregós. Però si voleu entendre les causes i conseqüències de la crisi social als Estats Units i albirar el que probablement ens espera aquí els propers temps, el context global que aporta l'autor és imprescindible. Un grapat d'empresaris han transformat el món al servei dels més rics i en detriment de la resta, amb Jeff Bezos al capdavant. No és fàcil d'entendre sense tot aquest context. I si hi voleu trobar el dimoni, l'hi trobareu. I us posareu d'una mala llet...
(SERGI)
És difícil imaginar la magnitud d'aquest gegant que és Amazon, l'empresa de l'home més ric del món. I encara és més difícil comprendre les xifres delirants que mou aquest negoci. Però la pregunta que ens hem de fer no és tant el què, sinó el com han aconseguit muntar un imperi que ho domina tot i que ha provocat profunds canvis socioeconòmics als EUA de les darreres dècades.
Alec MacGillis no ens explica només els motius de l'èxit fulgurant d'Amazon (i altres), sobretot ens n'explica les conseqüències. De com una empresa que ho arrasa tot i que s'ha servit d'incentius públics per prosperar, ha accentuat la desigualtat social i ha canviat la percepció del comerç, dels drets laborals i socials, ha provocat gentrificació amb cada nova seu establerta, ha devastat famílies i ha empitjorat xacres com el sensellarisme, l'addicció als opiacis i els problemes de salut mental.
Si hi busqueu només un treball que critiqui Amazon i us digui que és el dimoni escuat, aquest llibre s'us farà llarg i carregós. Però si voleu entendre les causes i conseqüències de la crisi social als Estats Units i albirar el que probablement ens espera aquí els propers temps, el context global que aporta l'autor és imprescindible. Un grapat d'empresaris han transformat el món al servei dels més rics i en detriment de la resta, amb Jeff Bezos al capdavant. No és fàcil d'entendre sense tot aquest context. I si hi voleu trobar el dimoni, l'hi trobareu. I us posareu d'una mala llet...
(SERGI)
May 26, 2021
I was surprised when I saw the many so-so or negative reviews of this book. I was even more surprised by the number of people who seem to think that this is a book about Amazon. I looked at it differently. I viewed it as an examination of the profound changes in the US economy over the last 40 years or so. A number of factors have brought about dramatic change - technological advances, the decision of government to stop enforcing antitrust laws, the demise of labor unions, globalization, changes in tax policies that favor well-off individuals and corporations, with tax burdens being shifted to the middle class, the loss of manufacturing jobs to overseas competitors, and the capture of government by the wealthy and big business. All of these changes have brought about a concentration of wealth and power in the hands of corporations and certain super-wealthy individuals, with a decline in the fortunes of the middle and working classes. Similarly, wealth has become concentrated in certain geographic areas, primarily a few large cities, mostly located on the coasts, with smaller cities and towns becoming poor and blighted. It is a story of steadily increasing inequality. Amazon and the other tech giants are the winners in this all or nothing economy. So the book is not so much the story of Amazon, but of the conditions that created Amazon and permit it to thrive while its competitors fail, often failing because of predatory pricing policies of Amazon that the antitrust regulators choose to ignore. That's what this book is about, and I found it to be an outstanding and compelling look at today's America.
The story is told through the experiences of individuals and I suppose that one could criticize the book as being based on anecdotes rather than a deep scientific study. I found the stories very meaningful. Take the local small business owners, who are disadvantaged by their own elected representatives. Clueless state and local officials who fall all over themselves to hand out tax credits and subsidies to giants like Amazon seem to not realize that they are imposing the costs of municipal services that Amazon uses on other taxpayers within their jurisdiction, creating an economic advantage for the Amazons of the world that their local competitors don't enjoy. So their own constituents are then unable to compete, and are driven out of business, with a tax loss for the municipality and income loss for the local businesses' employees. All of this is explained clearly in the book, which demonstrates the self-defeating effect of giving in to a corporation's demands for tax benefits.
The loss of unions has a similar effect. At one time, corporations paid their employees a living wage, and employees could actually afford to buy the company's products. Corporations that don't fear unions are the robber barons all over again. They pay the least that they can, the standard of living of the employees be damned. They don't protect their workers and they cover up unsafe business practices. Why? Because they can, and they control the government that supposedly regulates them, and they write the legislation that governs their practices.
I could go on and on. The book is filled with examples of the many factors that have hugely altered the US economy in the last half-century, almost unnoticed by those who are not directly affected. But you can see the results everywhere - in giant warehouses where workers can't even take a bathroom break and where they are dismissed for attempting to form a union, in gentrified Harlem and Washington, DC, and Seattle, where racial minorities can no longer afford to live in traditional minority neighborhoods (once the only sections of town where they were permitted to live), in hollowed out cities like Baltimore and Detroit and St. Louis, in the Dollar Generals and WalMarts that have replaced Macy's and May's and Bon Ton and Lord & Taylor, in factories in China and Vietnam that turn out the cheap goods to which some Americans have become addicted and which many Americans struggle to afford.
I thought that this was a great, great book, and it should be a wake-up call to all of us. Do we really want to live in a country where a few giant corporations write the laws, pay the politicians, destroy local businesses and huge parts of the country, are relieved of the burden of paying taxes, are free of any participation by labor unions, and who feel no responsibility for taking care of those whose means of supporting themselves has been wiped out by corporate irresponsibility? That's what we are moving toward, if we are not there already. This is a clear-eyed look at the new corporate-controlled America, and I highly recommend reading it.
The story is told through the experiences of individuals and I suppose that one could criticize the book as being based on anecdotes rather than a deep scientific study. I found the stories very meaningful. Take the local small business owners, who are disadvantaged by their own elected representatives. Clueless state and local officials who fall all over themselves to hand out tax credits and subsidies to giants like Amazon seem to not realize that they are imposing the costs of municipal services that Amazon uses on other taxpayers within their jurisdiction, creating an economic advantage for the Amazons of the world that their local competitors don't enjoy. So their own constituents are then unable to compete, and are driven out of business, with a tax loss for the municipality and income loss for the local businesses' employees. All of this is explained clearly in the book, which demonstrates the self-defeating effect of giving in to a corporation's demands for tax benefits.
The loss of unions has a similar effect. At one time, corporations paid their employees a living wage, and employees could actually afford to buy the company's products. Corporations that don't fear unions are the robber barons all over again. They pay the least that they can, the standard of living of the employees be damned. They don't protect their workers and they cover up unsafe business practices. Why? Because they can, and they control the government that supposedly regulates them, and they write the legislation that governs their practices.
I could go on and on. The book is filled with examples of the many factors that have hugely altered the US economy in the last half-century, almost unnoticed by those who are not directly affected. But you can see the results everywhere - in giant warehouses where workers can't even take a bathroom break and where they are dismissed for attempting to form a union, in gentrified Harlem and Washington, DC, and Seattle, where racial minorities can no longer afford to live in traditional minority neighborhoods (once the only sections of town where they were permitted to live), in hollowed out cities like Baltimore and Detroit and St. Louis, in the Dollar Generals and WalMarts that have replaced Macy's and May's and Bon Ton and Lord & Taylor, in factories in China and Vietnam that turn out the cheap goods to which some Americans have become addicted and which many Americans struggle to afford.
I thought that this was a great, great book, and it should be a wake-up call to all of us. Do we really want to live in a country where a few giant corporations write the laws, pay the politicians, destroy local businesses and huge parts of the country, are relieved of the burden of paying taxes, are free of any participation by labor unions, and who feel no responsibility for taking care of those whose means of supporting themselves has been wiped out by corporate irresponsibility? That's what we are moving toward, if we are not there already. This is a clear-eyed look at the new corporate-controlled America, and I highly recommend reading it.
did-not-finish
May 28, 2021Okay. I love the premise of this book so much that I tried reading it in two separate formats: on my Kindle (lolz I'm a hypocrite, keep reading) and on audio. Neither worked for me and I think that's because the scope of this book is too wide (and because the audiobook narrator sounded like a sports announcer).
The book explores the impact that Am*zon has on communities across the nation through the lens of several different protagonists: an Am*zon warehouse worker, a cardboard box putter-togetherer, and residents of cities like Seattle and San Francisco who are booted out once large tech companies change the threshold for basic survival. But the book is long, and the detail given to each character's plight is exhaustive, often to the point that I forget what the book is really getting at.
tl;dr please please please at the very minimum stop buying your books from Am*zon. It's the least you can do to keep your local bookseller employed and, oh, idk, KEEP TAXES IN YOUR LOCAL ECONOMY???
I write this as I use Goodreads daily and own a Kindle so, I suck. But.
tl;dr;dr also please do not tell me you voted for Tr*ump because you "care about the economy and middle class workers" and then support this behemoth of a corporation. Put your money where your mouth is and keep your neighbors employed. ok bye
The book explores the impact that Am*zon has on communities across the nation through the lens of several different protagonists: an Am*zon warehouse worker, a cardboard box putter-togetherer, and residents of cities like Seattle and San Francisco who are booted out once large tech companies change the threshold for basic survival. But the book is long, and the detail given to each character's plight is exhaustive, often to the point that I forget what the book is really getting at.
tl;dr please please please at the very minimum stop buying your books from Am*zon. It's the least you can do to keep your local bookseller employed and, oh, idk, KEEP TAXES IN YOUR LOCAL ECONOMY???
I write this as I use Goodreads daily and own a Kindle so, I suck. But.
tl;dr;dr also please do not tell me you voted for Tr*ump because you "care about the economy and middle class workers" and then support this behemoth of a corporation. Put your money where your mouth is and keep your neighbors employed. ok bye
December 21, 2021
Glad I ignored the reviews that said this was too focused on individual life stories. It's all about the people, people. I wish Amazon would use their power for good.
March 14, 2021
A devastating account of the labor market in America. There was a time when a job could give fulfillment - but for more and more people this word is associated only with huge warehouses, not personal happiness. And in no small part, the responsibility for this situation bears one company. It may seem easy to unjustly vilify the Big Tech, but Alec MacGillis doesn't rely on bias or prejudice: he gives us terrifying stats and numbers, as well as personal stories of ordinary, hard-working people who suffer from the long shadow of Amazon.
It is great non-fiction, full of painstakingly accumulated details and impressive research, but beautifully written and engaging like a novel. Highly recommended!
Thanks to the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book.
It is great non-fiction, full of painstakingly accumulated details and impressive research, but beautifully written and engaging like a novel. Highly recommended!
Thanks to the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book.
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August 27, 2022Això no és un llibre sobre Amazon. Això és un llibre sobre les conseqüències, directes o indirectes, d'aquesta empresa milionària als barris, als carrers, a les famílies, als seus treballadors en nòmina, als subcontractats, al trànsit de les ciutats i a tot allò que ens envolta. Ells es queden els milions de beneficis i la resta del món, patim les conseqüències de la seva riquesa.
April 25, 2021
“Fulfillment” is a shallow series of narratives of working-class lives under 21st-century U.S. capitalism. It would have worked better as a podcast with accompanying anticapitalist memes to share, out of frustration, for social media points.
The book has good storytelling, but is riddled with errors and misinterpretations about Seattle, Amazon, and other topics. (I live in Seattle and formerly worked for Amazon.) Despite the book's title, subtitle, and cover art, this is not a book about Amazon, nor does it claim to be in the text. Instead, “Fulfillment” latches onto every dystopian trope there is about the ways in which modern companies have identified and disrupted inefficient markets without regard for feelings — and it is upset in ways tailor-made for memes to share with your iPhone on your Facebook feed.
Rather than winners and losers, this is a book about villains and tragic heroes. The villains are the people with money and influence and the heroes are the ones who started with little and ended with nothing. It makes for a very predictable narrative. If a wealthy person is introduced, you know they'll be a winner-villain; if a working-class person is introduced, they'll be a loser-hero. Apart from the internecine battles between labor unions and socialists over Seattle’s abortive “head tax,” virtually every story told in “Fulfillment” follows a predictable narrative. Amazon’s white-collar employees are rhetorical punching bags. Successful cities are mocked for their tasting menus. Dying cities are lamented for their dollar stores. The Manichean view of America is politically popular yet tiresome in its cliched oversimplification.
The author’s only suggestion: force companies to locate jobs throughout the country to rebuild the mythical midcentury Main Street that is often nostalgically celebrated but whose limited selection and high prices seem untenable today. I found this conclusion, like most of “Fulfillment,” naive and ignorant to history.
The book has good storytelling, but is riddled with errors and misinterpretations about Seattle, Amazon, and other topics. (I live in Seattle and formerly worked for Amazon.) Despite the book's title, subtitle, and cover art, this is not a book about Amazon, nor does it claim to be in the text. Instead, “Fulfillment” latches onto every dystopian trope there is about the ways in which modern companies have identified and disrupted inefficient markets without regard for feelings — and it is upset in ways tailor-made for memes to share with your iPhone on your Facebook feed.
Rather than winners and losers, this is a book about villains and tragic heroes. The villains are the people with money and influence and the heroes are the ones who started with little and ended with nothing. It makes for a very predictable narrative. If a wealthy person is introduced, you know they'll be a winner-villain; if a working-class person is introduced, they'll be a loser-hero. Apart from the internecine battles between labor unions and socialists over Seattle’s abortive “head tax,” virtually every story told in “Fulfillment” follows a predictable narrative. Amazon’s white-collar employees are rhetorical punching bags. Successful cities are mocked for their tasting menus. Dying cities are lamented for their dollar stores. The Manichean view of America is politically popular yet tiresome in its cliched oversimplification.
The author’s only suggestion: force companies to locate jobs throughout the country to rebuild the mythical midcentury Main Street that is often nostalgically celebrated but whose limited selection and high prices seem untenable today. I found this conclusion, like most of “Fulfillment,” naive and ignorant to history.
March 29, 2021
31st book of 2021: Unfulfilled
The American model of technology innovation undoubtedly has created winners and losers. Hearing the stories of folks that are part of the 800,000 strong army powering prime delivery is a compelling premise, and I'm excited to go beyond a NYT article into what it means to work in a semi-automated warehouse, the likely future of low-skill work in America and eventually the world.
In the introduction, it MacGillis takes an odd form of make-warehousing-great-again style nostalgia that uses big tech as a synonym for everything wrong with inequality today. MacGillis claims that the issue of geographic inequality, or the effects of low income jobs remain unexamined, but I beg to differ:
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism is a cogent account of the trends from those falling from working class to destitute class. The New Geography of Jobs makes a compelling case about how geographic inequality is bad for the country. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is a more sympathetic and engaging view of what it means to live on the edge when the cost of everything essential is rising.
Macgillis' accounts of cities he's clearly never lived in are not compelling. His dramatization rather than humanization of individual narratives, and inability to tie statistics into a story beyond factoids means I'm still waiting for a good book on this important topic.
The American model of technology innovation undoubtedly has created winners and losers. Hearing the stories of folks that are part of the 800,000 strong army powering prime delivery is a compelling premise, and I'm excited to go beyond a NYT article into what it means to work in a semi-automated warehouse, the likely future of low-skill work in America and eventually the world.
In the introduction, it MacGillis takes an odd form of make-warehousing-great-again style nostalgia that uses big tech as a synonym for everything wrong with inequality today. MacGillis claims that the issue of geographic inequality, or the effects of low income jobs remain unexamined, but I beg to differ:
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism is a cogent account of the trends from those falling from working class to destitute class. The New Geography of Jobs makes a compelling case about how geographic inequality is bad for the country. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is a more sympathetic and engaging view of what it means to live on the edge when the cost of everything essential is rising.
Macgillis' accounts of cities he's clearly never lived in are not compelling. His dramatization rather than humanization of individual narratives, and inability to tie statistics into a story beyond factoids means I'm still waiting for a good book on this important topic.
February 6, 2022
Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America was ultimately (ironically) not what I expected or hoped. I wanted to read more about the Amazonification phenomenon--labor policy, worker exploitation and injury, lost tax revenue, the wealth gap growing exponentially at an alarming pace, dystopian corporate ethics, the proliferation/encouragement of counterfeit and copied products, etc. And many of these issues were touched on...briefly, in between long personal profiles of various workers and business owners across the United States. There was a great deal of unrelated backstory for each person/group of people covered in the text, information that is of course of great importance in the context of these peoples' personal lives but that rarely contributed to any understanding of MacGillis's larger point (?) about Amazon's devastating effect on the American economy.
An aspect of the book of great personal interest for me was the coverage of The Bon-Ton's takeover of Elder-Beerman, as one of my parents was employed at the Dayton, Ohio location for many years, including during this transitional time. MacGillis presents The Bon-Ton as a small, benevolent, worker-friendly company unfairly run into the ground by bigger fish. The author's description did not match my childhood memories of that time period--not necessarily surprising, since I was (as I said) a child, and my experience of the buyout was filtered through my dad's more direct experience and the many tense conversations between my parents, but still of note.
An aspect of the book of great personal interest for me was the coverage of The Bon-Ton's takeover of Elder-Beerman, as one of my parents was employed at the Dayton, Ohio location for many years, including during this transitional time. MacGillis presents The Bon-Ton as a small, benevolent, worker-friendly company unfairly run into the ground by bigger fish. The author's description did not match my childhood memories of that time period--not necessarily surprising, since I was (as I said) a child, and my experience of the buyout was filtered through my dad's more direct experience and the many tense conversations between my parents, but still of note.
July 27, 2021
Summary: An incredibly timely, relevant read that manages to be both infuriating and engaging.
This story isn't a look at Amazon itself, but a sweeping exploration of the people and places impacted by that company's expansion. The author talks to an incredible variety of people. They live across the United States and their lives have intersected with Amazon in countless ways. The author also talks to older people and sprinkles in some history himself, showing how we reached the current state of the country. He particularly focuses on the way Amazon has exacerbated national, regional, and local inequality.
What an incredible book! I admired that the author mostly just laid out the facts of this story. He does reveal some of his own opinions about what needs to happen at the end of the book. For the most part, though, he leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions. This certainly isn't a polemic. I loved the many different perspectives the author shared. The collection of varied stories was essential for understanding the many facets of such an enormous company. The organization of chapters primarily by place, occasionally by theme, worked well. The author managed to make a cohesive story out of many moving parts.
The author did a particularly good job of sharing stories that are rarely told. At least, I've rarely read this much about ordinary people struggling to get by. Differences in the experiences of Black and white workers, from past to present day, were described in some detail. I loved the many quotes and little details the author used to bring you into each person's experience. This made the story strangely enjoyable and engaging, despite also being frustrating and infuriating. In particular, I am still left wondering why so many politicians throw incentives at a company that does so little for the communities that surround it. I'm guessing its pretty much always donations, but if so, the author didn't share that info in most cases.
I loved this enough that I feel like I should have more to say about it. I think I've highlighted its main strengths though. It was an enjoyable, immersive read, but with the majority of US households holding Prime memberships, it's also timely and relevant to everyone. Definitely a book I'd like everyone to pick up.This review was originally posted on Doing Dewey
This story isn't a look at Amazon itself, but a sweeping exploration of the people and places impacted by that company's expansion. The author talks to an incredible variety of people. They live across the United States and their lives have intersected with Amazon in countless ways. The author also talks to older people and sprinkles in some history himself, showing how we reached the current state of the country. He particularly focuses on the way Amazon has exacerbated national, regional, and local inequality.
What an incredible book! I admired that the author mostly just laid out the facts of this story. He does reveal some of his own opinions about what needs to happen at the end of the book. For the most part, though, he leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions. This certainly isn't a polemic. I loved the many different perspectives the author shared. The collection of varied stories was essential for understanding the many facets of such an enormous company. The organization of chapters primarily by place, occasionally by theme, worked well. The author managed to make a cohesive story out of many moving parts.
The author did a particularly good job of sharing stories that are rarely told. At least, I've rarely read this much about ordinary people struggling to get by. Differences in the experiences of Black and white workers, from past to present day, were described in some detail. I loved the many quotes and little details the author used to bring you into each person's experience. This made the story strangely enjoyable and engaging, despite also being frustrating and infuriating. In particular, I am still left wondering why so many politicians throw incentives at a company that does so little for the communities that surround it. I'm guessing its pretty much always donations, but if so, the author didn't share that info in most cases.
I loved this enough that I feel like I should have more to say about it. I think I've highlighted its main strengths though. It was an enjoyable, immersive read, but with the majority of US households holding Prime memberships, it's also timely and relevant to everyone. Definitely a book I'd like everyone to pick up.This review was originally posted on Doing Dewey
January 19, 2022
MacGillis has clearly spent a lot of time researching and documenting the fragmentation of American society, laying much of the blame on the widening concentration of wealth in ten or so metropolitan areas, resulting in the hollowing out of the rest of the nation. He lays much of the blame at the feet of Amazon, and presents evidence of Amazon's relying on falsehoods and suppression of information about working conditions with the majority of the company's employees. I found the book interesting, but fragmented, making it hard to draw conclusions. It has made me even more reluctant to purchase from Amazon, though.
March 26, 2021
This book is excellent. It’s the matching piece to all of the political analyses of a very split American electorate. The authors do an amazing job of picking locations in the US and weaving personal stories into a pattern of exploitation, class struggle and small town loss. I was glued to every page and struggled to justify my own shopping choices. Or my enjoyment of Goodreads, where I spend a lot of time, another Amazon tentacle. I don’t have an answer but this book presents alarming and fascinating information.
April 19, 2021
What a journalist! I’ve seen his work on covid, and was excited for this book. It’s not really about Amazon per se, but more Amazon as a mirror and input into our hollowing out of economic opportunity and community
April 10, 2021
Alec MacGillis is a journalist who has written a new book on Amazon.com. The book presents a series of chapters about different part of the US, ranging from Seattle to Dayton to Central Pennsylvania, to Baltimore, to Washington, D.C. and suburban Virginia, to metro New York. All of the chapters present a view of late 20th century and early 21st century America and all have in common a focus of the role of Amazon in the current economic and social trajectory of the area profiled in the chapter. Each chapter is a case study in which MacGillis follows the life stories and work careers of a number of parties in the area. We come back to them in subsequent chapters so that the book presents a composite picture of American economic life in the age of Amazon. The timing of the book is interesting. Most of the book covers up through 2019 but not the COVID-19 pandemic, The book was being finalized and edited into 2020, so that there are some references to COVID and there is some sustained treatment of the pandemic in a final chapter.
A good portion of the book covers some well traveled territory in the deindustrialization of America and the hollowing out of the middle class as high paying and protected union jobs evaporated or went overseas and were replaced by temporary work, precarious contractor work, low level service work, big box retail work, and working for Amazon.com. The fall of the middle class from grace is clearly documented. This is part and parcel of the narrative that has dominated the trade books about the US economy since the crash of 2008 and more intensively since the 2016 election.
There were also winners to these changes and it is the usual culprits of the economic elites and the enabling classes of highly educated professionals. These have all gravitated towards large central city complexes on the coasts along with some inland exceptions like Chicago. Life in these cities has been booming for some and good enough for others. Middle size cities and smaller towns have fared worse leading to political divisiveness and two different countries that do not seem to fit together well. Again, this is not new either and fits right in with books based on the outbreak of economic inequality since the Reagan years and the popularity of Springsteen songs.
So is Fulfillment just a rehash bashing of Amazon? No, it is not. To start with, MacGillis brings the story up to date for Amazon and does a nice job explaining the growth of Amazon’s huge expansion of fulfillment centers and its AWS data centers. These two businesses are critical for examining recent developments and also for understanding why Amazon appears to have prospered during COIVID-19. Yes, it is a “winner take all” economy but Amazon made some big bets that served it extremely well as the global pandemic unfolded last year.
The other point to note, and some may disagree, is that Amazon is not the clear villain of this story. The economic trends behind deindustrialization predated the dominance of Amazon. That Amazon figured out how to build its massive supply chain and data behemoth to take advantage of these trends is a fact and hardly a crime. Jobs are jobs, the checks cash, and customers are happy. There is no need to push a strong morality tale. Are there things about Amazon for critics to note? Sure. But Amazon’s role in this story is more mixed. That Amazon’s rise seems associated with middle America’s fall is unfortunate but correlation is not causation and there is lots of blame to go around for US economic woes. As for me, I have shopped at Amazon for a long time and have no apologies to makes, but MacGillis’s book is very good at informing the business logic behind some of Amazon’s business lines, for example in the chapter on Amazon getting small businesses to sell their wares on Amazon’s platform but then competing against these same small businesses. The growth of big business in US history has always featured these dynamics and MacGillis is good at describing them.
Several of the chapters have substantial back stories, for which cites are provided for those interested. The chapters on Baltimore and neighboring industrial plants are especially good. The book is well written and easy to follow. It reads like a journalist account - which it is - and readers wanting more detailed analyses will need to go elsewhere.
As these books go - and there are lots of books on Amazon - this is a nice piece of work and well worth reading.
A good portion of the book covers some well traveled territory in the deindustrialization of America and the hollowing out of the middle class as high paying and protected union jobs evaporated or went overseas and were replaced by temporary work, precarious contractor work, low level service work, big box retail work, and working for Amazon.com. The fall of the middle class from grace is clearly documented. This is part and parcel of the narrative that has dominated the trade books about the US economy since the crash of 2008 and more intensively since the 2016 election.
There were also winners to these changes and it is the usual culprits of the economic elites and the enabling classes of highly educated professionals. These have all gravitated towards large central city complexes on the coasts along with some inland exceptions like Chicago. Life in these cities has been booming for some and good enough for others. Middle size cities and smaller towns have fared worse leading to political divisiveness and two different countries that do not seem to fit together well. Again, this is not new either and fits right in with books based on the outbreak of economic inequality since the Reagan years and the popularity of Springsteen songs.
So is Fulfillment just a rehash bashing of Amazon? No, it is not. To start with, MacGillis brings the story up to date for Amazon and does a nice job explaining the growth of Amazon’s huge expansion of fulfillment centers and its AWS data centers. These two businesses are critical for examining recent developments and also for understanding why Amazon appears to have prospered during COIVID-19. Yes, it is a “winner take all” economy but Amazon made some big bets that served it extremely well as the global pandemic unfolded last year.
The other point to note, and some may disagree, is that Amazon is not the clear villain of this story. The economic trends behind deindustrialization predated the dominance of Amazon. That Amazon figured out how to build its massive supply chain and data behemoth to take advantage of these trends is a fact and hardly a crime. Jobs are jobs, the checks cash, and customers are happy. There is no need to push a strong morality tale. Are there things about Amazon for critics to note? Sure. But Amazon’s role in this story is more mixed. That Amazon’s rise seems associated with middle America’s fall is unfortunate but correlation is not causation and there is lots of blame to go around for US economic woes. As for me, I have shopped at Amazon for a long time and have no apologies to makes, but MacGillis’s book is very good at informing the business logic behind some of Amazon’s business lines, for example in the chapter on Amazon getting small businesses to sell their wares on Amazon’s platform but then competing against these same small businesses. The growth of big business in US history has always featured these dynamics and MacGillis is good at describing them.
Several of the chapters have substantial back stories, for which cites are provided for those interested. The chapters on Baltimore and neighboring industrial plants are especially good. The book is well written and easy to follow. It reads like a journalist account - which it is - and readers wanting more detailed analyses will need to go elsewhere.
As these books go - and there are lots of books on Amazon - this is a nice piece of work and well worth reading.
August 18, 2021
In two books published over the course of the past decade, Brad Stone has told the inside story of Amazon's rise. The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound chronicle the company's growth from a quirky online bookstore founded a quarter-century ago into the corporate juggernaut it has become. Now another journalist, Alec MacGillis, surveys Amazon from the outside. In Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America, he roams across the country from El Paso to Seattle, to Northern Virginia and the small towns of Ohio and Pennsylvania. At every location, he introduces Amazon employees, local officials, and activists bound up in the repercussions of the company's explosive growth. Fulfillment surveys the damage Amazon has done.
A price too high to pay
In MacGillis' view, the price our society has paid for the convenience and low prices Amazon offers is onerous. Government treasuries impoverished by lavish tax concessions to Amazon. Cruel and often dangerous working conditions in the company's hundreds of fulfillment centers and other facilities where goods are prepared for delivery. Draconian anti-union policies that lead Amazon to fire employees at the merest hint of interest in organizing. Retail merchants forced into bankruptcy by online prices driven artificially low by Chinese counterfeits. And a spike in the opioid epidemic as workers struggle with the monotony and accelerated pace of operations. Overall, the damage Amazon has done is appalling.
To counter these assertions, the company crows about the hundreds of thousands of jobs it has created. But by 2018 "Amazon had eliminated about twice as many jobs at independent retailers as it had created."
The damage Amazon has done illuminates a larger trend
Yet Fulfillment is far more than a catalogue of Amazon's sins. MacGillis views the company's success within the context of a large and troubling trend. "By 2019," he writes, "more than 70 percent of all venture capital was flowing to just three states: California, New York, and Massachusetts." The digital revolution, in which Amazon plays such a prominent role, has exacerbated regional inequality.
"Put most simply," MacGillis notes, "business activity that used to be dispersed across hundreds of companies large and small, whether in media or retail or finance, was increasingly dominated by a handful of giant firms. As a result, profits and growth opportunities once spread across the country were increasingly flowing to the places where those dominant companies were based. With a winner-take-all economy came winner-take-all places." And this increasing imbalance of wealth between rich states and poor "was making life harder in both sorts of places. It was throwing the whole country off-kilter."
MacGillis brings these trends to light through a compelling mixture of anecdotes, biographical sketches, and narrative. He's a skillful writer.
About the author
Alec MacGillis is a senior writer for ProPublica covering politics and government. Earlier, he reported for The New Republic, The Washington Post, and the Baltimore Sun. MacGillis has received the prestigious George Polk Award, among others. His first book, The Cynic, a biography of Senator Mitch McConnell, appeared in 2014.
A price too high to pay
In MacGillis' view, the price our society has paid for the convenience and low prices Amazon offers is onerous. Government treasuries impoverished by lavish tax concessions to Amazon. Cruel and often dangerous working conditions in the company's hundreds of fulfillment centers and other facilities where goods are prepared for delivery. Draconian anti-union policies that lead Amazon to fire employees at the merest hint of interest in organizing. Retail merchants forced into bankruptcy by online prices driven artificially low by Chinese counterfeits. And a spike in the opioid epidemic as workers struggle with the monotony and accelerated pace of operations. Overall, the damage Amazon has done is appalling.
To counter these assertions, the company crows about the hundreds of thousands of jobs it has created. But by 2018 "Amazon had eliminated about twice as many jobs at independent retailers as it had created."
The damage Amazon has done illuminates a larger trend
Yet Fulfillment is far more than a catalogue of Amazon's sins. MacGillis views the company's success within the context of a large and troubling trend. "By 2019," he writes, "more than 70 percent of all venture capital was flowing to just three states: California, New York, and Massachusetts." The digital revolution, in which Amazon plays such a prominent role, has exacerbated regional inequality.
"Put most simply," MacGillis notes, "business activity that used to be dispersed across hundreds of companies large and small, whether in media or retail or finance, was increasingly dominated by a handful of giant firms. As a result, profits and growth opportunities once spread across the country were increasingly flowing to the places where those dominant companies were based. With a winner-take-all economy came winner-take-all places." And this increasing imbalance of wealth between rich states and poor "was making life harder in both sorts of places. It was throwing the whole country off-kilter."
MacGillis brings these trends to light through a compelling mixture of anecdotes, biographical sketches, and narrative. He's a skillful writer.
About the author
Alec MacGillis is a senior writer for ProPublica covering politics and government. Earlier, he reported for The New Republic, The Washington Post, and the Baltimore Sun. MacGillis has received the prestigious George Polk Award, among others. His first book, The Cynic, a biography of Senator Mitch McConnell, appeared in 2014.
June 28, 2021
Really 3 1/2 stars mostly because the book wanders in its focus a bit from the core mission. If you can enjoy the journey and not focus too much on the destination, then you'll like the book a bit more.
Some chapters have little to do with Amazon or online retail, focusing instead on the issues that many other books have chronicled already. Breakdown of urban cores, white flight to suburbia, offshoring of manufacturing jobs, increasing rates of drug abuse, the divide between haves and have-nots, both in terms of cities and overall demographic groups. A lot of these trends of course predate the rise of online retail. The chapters most interesting to me were ones that focused on true Amazon effects and practices. How Amazon tries to get independent companies doing well to sell as third-party sellers on their site only to then use that data to create their own knockoffs that are cheaper. The decimation of small office supply sellers which of course represents a microcosm of what Amazon is doing to countless lines of business.
Besides the major digressions like the history of Baltimore's Bethlehem Steel works or the rise of the consulting/lobbying "industry", another thing to get used to is the non-linear story telling style. The book is built around personal stories, but rarely is a person's story complete in a single chapter. They are dropped and then revisited later; sometimes for good reason , showing the passage of time and how their lives have changed and other times for not so explicable reasons. I would have enjoyed a little bit more of a start to finish approach although I realize the skipping all over approach is pretty common in fiction works. Not so sure it always works here.
But in summary, a good attempt at showing the many ways we are being changed by the retail world we live in. And is their some irony here that we are reviewing a book about Amazon on a site owned by Amazon?
Some chapters have little to do with Amazon or online retail, focusing instead on the issues that many other books have chronicled already. Breakdown of urban cores, white flight to suburbia, offshoring of manufacturing jobs, increasing rates of drug abuse, the divide between haves and have-nots, both in terms of cities and overall demographic groups. A lot of these trends of course predate the rise of online retail. The chapters most interesting to me were ones that focused on true Amazon effects and practices. How Amazon tries to get independent companies doing well to sell as third-party sellers on their site only to then use that data to create their own knockoffs that are cheaper. The decimation of small office supply sellers which of course represents a microcosm of what Amazon is doing to countless lines of business.
Besides the major digressions like the history of Baltimore's Bethlehem Steel works or the rise of the consulting/lobbying "industry", another thing to get used to is the non-linear story telling style. The book is built around personal stories, but rarely is a person's story complete in a single chapter. They are dropped and then revisited later; sometimes for good reason , showing the passage of time and how their lives have changed and other times for not so explicable reasons. I would have enjoyed a little bit more of a start to finish approach although I realize the skipping all over approach is pretty common in fiction works. Not so sure it always works here.
But in summary, a good attempt at showing the many ways we are being changed by the retail world we live in. And is their some irony here that we are reviewing a book about Amazon on a site owned by Amazon?
June 2, 2021
This is well researched but meanders into stories of related and affected businesses and people that just aren’t that interesting. It’s meandering and boring in spots. I was left scratching my head about what some of the characters had to do with Amazon at all.
March 22, 2021
Alec MacGillis Aufruf zum Innehalten ist sehr viel mehr als die Kritik an einem Monopolisten, der gemeinsam mit drei weiteren Riesenkonzernen (Google, Facebook und Microsoft) in den letzten 10 Jahren die Weltherrschaft übernommen zu haben scheint. Der Autor verbindet Einzelschicksale, die wohl kaum einen Leser unberührt lassen werden, mit der Wirtschafts-und Sozialgeschichte ausgewählter Regionen, in denen der Amazon-Konzern sich niedergelassen hat, und einer kritischen, höchst aktuellen Bestandsaufnahme, wie die Corona-Pandemie die Macht der vier Konzerne weiter gefestigt hat. Wie der Niedergang der amerikanischen Provinz, der Aufstieg weniger wohlhabender Speckgürtel, der boomende Onlinehandel und das Zerbrechen des Landes in Arm und Reich sich in den letzten 10 Jahren weiter vertiefen konnte, das sind komplexe Zusammenhänge, die der amerikanische Journalist äußerst spannend schildert. Am Beispiel der Region Seattle zeigt McGillis zunächst, wie in der Folge von Strukturwandel ganze Regionen kippten, weil in wenigen Metropolen Fachkräfte in großer Zahl auf den Wohnungsmarkt drängten, in der Folge Miet- und Grundstückspreise sich in schwindelnde Höhen schraubten und sich normale Arbeitnehmer die Mieten nicht mehr leisten konnten. Im Gegensatz zur häufig vertretenen Annahme, dass Wirtschaftswachstum der gesamten Bevölkerung nützt, zeigt MacGillis, das hochqualifizierte Jobs selten weitere gut bezahlte Jobs generieren, sondern zumeist unsichere Jobs im Niedriglohnsektor, die kaum für den Lebensunterhalt ausreichen.
Hoch interessant fand ich die Wirtschaftsgeschichte Baltimores, wo der Niedergang der Stahlindustrie dem Amazon-Konzern praktisch den Weg bereitete, auf den Trümmern eines ganzen Stadtteils ein gigantisches Logistikzentrum zu errichten. Hochinteressant deshalb, weil ich mich angesichts dramatischer Einzelschicksale fragte, wie es die amerikanische Nation eigentlich mit dem Respekt vor ihren Stahlwerkern und Soldaten hält, deren Berufskrankheiten und traumatische Kriegserlebnisse samt dafür zu bezahlenden Arztrechnungen offenbar zum privaten Risiko erklärt wurden. Auf Managerebene von Beth Steel konnten kurz vor dem Bankrott noch flink fette Gewinne gebunkert werden, während die Arbeiter ihre sauer verdiente Altersversorgung einbüßten und die Umweltschäden der Allgemeinheit überlassen blieben. Ein weiteres eindringliches Beispiel bringt MacGillis mit einer Entscheidung für die Region El Paso. Hier zeigten sich die politisch Verantwortlichen unfähig zu erkennen, dass es bei der Materialbeschaffung für Schulen und Behörden nicht zuerst um den Preis geht, sondern Groß- und Einzelhandel über Fachkenntnisse verfügen, die mit dem Sterben des lokalen Handels für immer verloren sind. An anderer Stelle vermittelt MacGillis ebenso eindringlich, wie der Niedergang des Einzelhandels in der amerikanischen Provinz zum Zeitungssterben (durch fehlende Anzeigenkunden) und weiter direkt zur Wahl Donald Trumps führte, weil die auf Washington zentrierte Berichterstattung offenbar ein schiefes Bild erzeugte.
Hochaktuell (mit Hinweis auf Stellungnahmen von Khan 2017 und Mitchell 2020) weist MacGillis nach, wie die amerikanische Kartellbehörde versagte, indem sie sich allein auf das Thema Preisabsprachen konzentrierte und die gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen von Megakonzernen ignorierte. Im Jahr nach dem Ausbruch der Corona-Pandemie wirkt seine Darstellung des „Winner-Takes-All“-Effekts auf ausgewählte Personen und Regionen natürlich besonders makaber. Berechtigte Kritik an Amazons Monopolstellung, die der Autor überzeugend begründet, sollte nicht aus dem Blick verlieren, dass erst die Überzeugung, der freie Markt würde es schon richten, dem rücksichtslosen Raubtierkapitalismus die Loipe spurte, der er nur zu folgen brauchte. Nicht glücklich bin ich mit dem deutschen Titel des Buches, der der Bedeutungsvielfalt des Begriffs „Fulfillment“ nicht gerecht wird und m. A. die psychologische Seite der Macht des Olinehandels außerachtlässt.
Meine Erwartungen an amerikanische Sachbuchautoren ist eher gering, weil mir bei ihnen oft der Blick über den nationalen Tellerrand fehlt. Alec MacGillis hat mich positiv überrascht, weil seine Dramaturgie aus Einzelschicksalen, Wirtschaftsgeschichte und sein Bogen in die unmittelbare Gegenwart sich ausgesprochen spannend wegliest.
Hoch interessant fand ich die Wirtschaftsgeschichte Baltimores, wo der Niedergang der Stahlindustrie dem Amazon-Konzern praktisch den Weg bereitete, auf den Trümmern eines ganzen Stadtteils ein gigantisches Logistikzentrum zu errichten. Hochinteressant deshalb, weil ich mich angesichts dramatischer Einzelschicksale fragte, wie es die amerikanische Nation eigentlich mit dem Respekt vor ihren Stahlwerkern und Soldaten hält, deren Berufskrankheiten und traumatische Kriegserlebnisse samt dafür zu bezahlenden Arztrechnungen offenbar zum privaten Risiko erklärt wurden. Auf Managerebene von Beth Steel konnten kurz vor dem Bankrott noch flink fette Gewinne gebunkert werden, während die Arbeiter ihre sauer verdiente Altersversorgung einbüßten und die Umweltschäden der Allgemeinheit überlassen blieben. Ein weiteres eindringliches Beispiel bringt MacGillis mit einer Entscheidung für die Region El Paso. Hier zeigten sich die politisch Verantwortlichen unfähig zu erkennen, dass es bei der Materialbeschaffung für Schulen und Behörden nicht zuerst um den Preis geht, sondern Groß- und Einzelhandel über Fachkenntnisse verfügen, die mit dem Sterben des lokalen Handels für immer verloren sind. An anderer Stelle vermittelt MacGillis ebenso eindringlich, wie der Niedergang des Einzelhandels in der amerikanischen Provinz zum Zeitungssterben (durch fehlende Anzeigenkunden) und weiter direkt zur Wahl Donald Trumps führte, weil die auf Washington zentrierte Berichterstattung offenbar ein schiefes Bild erzeugte.
Hochaktuell (mit Hinweis auf Stellungnahmen von Khan 2017 und Mitchell 2020) weist MacGillis nach, wie die amerikanische Kartellbehörde versagte, indem sie sich allein auf das Thema Preisabsprachen konzentrierte und die gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen von Megakonzernen ignorierte. Im Jahr nach dem Ausbruch der Corona-Pandemie wirkt seine Darstellung des „Winner-Takes-All“-Effekts auf ausgewählte Personen und Regionen natürlich besonders makaber. Berechtigte Kritik an Amazons Monopolstellung, die der Autor überzeugend begründet, sollte nicht aus dem Blick verlieren, dass erst die Überzeugung, der freie Markt würde es schon richten, dem rücksichtslosen Raubtierkapitalismus die Loipe spurte, der er nur zu folgen brauchte. Nicht glücklich bin ich mit dem deutschen Titel des Buches, der der Bedeutungsvielfalt des Begriffs „Fulfillment“ nicht gerecht wird und m. A. die psychologische Seite der Macht des Olinehandels außerachtlässt.
Meine Erwartungen an amerikanische Sachbuchautoren ist eher gering, weil mir bei ihnen oft der Blick über den nationalen Tellerrand fehlt. Alec MacGillis hat mich positiv überrascht, weil seine Dramaturgie aus Einzelschicksalen, Wirtschaftsgeschichte und sein Bogen in die unmittelbare Gegenwart sich ausgesprochen spannend wegliest.
February 26, 2022
I loved this book, it disgusted me.
It’s a bit hyperbolic, which I think is to be expected, but even after stripping that away, the sheer numbers and audacity will shake you. This is a book that will better illustrate one of the key ways that the gap between rich and poor in the US is widening.
It’s a bit hyperbolic, which I think is to be expected, but even after stripping that away, the sheer numbers and audacity will shake you. This is a book that will better illustrate one of the key ways that the gap between rich and poor in the US is widening.
June 28, 2021
This book had a lot of interesting information in it, and it mentioned some facts about Amazon's business practices that would be of great concern if true. However, the extremely heavy-handed spin inserted liberally throughout the pages really undercut the message, and left me wondering how much of the author's claims were truthfully and accurately presented.
One technique which I really disliked was the extensive use of narrative biography, where the author would attempt to appeal to emotion by getting the reader to "know a character". He would tell a really intimate story about events in a person's life, and how they felt at major points in their careers, and how they reacted when good or bad stuff happened to them, etc. The fact that a lot of these characters have been dead for some time and the author could not possibly have known these details really drives home the fact that he's taking a lot of artistic license in these stories (a.k.a. just making stuff up) to try to manipulate the reader's emotions. Many of these characters didn't even have much if anything to do with Amazon. At one point the author talked about a guy who was killed in a tornado, and I think he was trying to insinuate that it was Amazon's fault somehow because the guy was an Amazon contractor. There were so many of these tangentially related segues that just felt like pure nonsense.
I also didn't like how the author tried really hard to spin his political views into the book. A lot of times when he had some critique of Amazon, he tried to tie it into the Republican party as well. I think he was really trying to make it seem that Amazon and Republicans were conspiring, and was insinuating that Amazon was making back-door deals with Republicans, and trying to get them into power, and using them to pass shady laws. This view of reality seems to have gone through an extremely heavy cognitive filter. After reading the book I looked up Amazon's political donation history and it's been split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans all the way back. When individual Amazon contributors are included, the contributions to Democrats are at least double those to Republicans, and in 2020 it was more like a ratio of 10 to 1. It appears the author is either ignoring or exaggerating half the story in order to push a political agenda. In either case, it makes the rest of his accounting also very suspect.
Anyway, my takeaway from this book is that Amazon might be engaging in some business practices that are very ethically questionable, and I'd like to look into it more. However, I absolutely cannot trust anything this author is telling me because of the extreme and blatant amounts of bias he puts into his writing.
One technique which I really disliked was the extensive use of narrative biography, where the author would attempt to appeal to emotion by getting the reader to "know a character". He would tell a really intimate story about events in a person's life, and how they felt at major points in their careers, and how they reacted when good or bad stuff happened to them, etc. The fact that a lot of these characters have been dead for some time and the author could not possibly have known these details really drives home the fact that he's taking a lot of artistic license in these stories (a.k.a. just making stuff up) to try to manipulate the reader's emotions. Many of these characters didn't even have much if anything to do with Amazon. At one point the author talked about a guy who was killed in a tornado, and I think he was trying to insinuate that it was Amazon's fault somehow because the guy was an Amazon contractor. There were so many of these tangentially related segues that just felt like pure nonsense.
I also didn't like how the author tried really hard to spin his political views into the book. A lot of times when he had some critique of Amazon, he tried to tie it into the Republican party as well. I think he was really trying to make it seem that Amazon and Republicans were conspiring, and was insinuating that Amazon was making back-door deals with Republicans, and trying to get them into power, and using them to pass shady laws. This view of reality seems to have gone through an extremely heavy cognitive filter. After reading the book I looked up Amazon's political donation history and it's been split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans all the way back. When individual Amazon contributors are included, the contributions to Democrats are at least double those to Republicans, and in 2020 it was more like a ratio of 10 to 1. It appears the author is either ignoring or exaggerating half the story in order to push a political agenda. In either case, it makes the rest of his accounting also very suspect.
Anyway, my takeaway from this book is that Amazon might be engaging in some business practices that are very ethically questionable, and I'd like to look into it more. However, I absolutely cannot trust anything this author is telling me because of the extreme and blatant amounts of bias he puts into his writing.
June 18, 2021
I bought this book after watching a compelling Q&A event with the author. I like the concept and the organization, and the substantial research that informs the descriptions of communities and individual/familiar life-stories. The author has a vivid narrative style and an ability to balance details and big story.
So when I say this book makes me sick, it's not an indictment of the research or writing. It's because the stories, and the cumulative big story, are nauseating and depressing. On a bad day I wonder, what is human life for? Is it for a relatively small number of people to accumulate an unimaginable amount of wealth, privacy, and personal security? is it for a greater number of people to stumble along from day to day, crisis to crisis, accident to accident, failure to failure, loss to loss, relapse to relapse? It helped me understand "deaths of despair," and that's sickening.
I no longer wonder whether A----n.com is a cause or a symptom of social collapse... it's definitely a cause. But not a sole cause. As in the case of oxycontin, Purdue Pharma, and the Sackler cartel, Bezos and A----n.com couldn't do their blood-sucking work without the active support of politicians and deregulators and a corrupt legal system and the revolving door between industry and the government that's supposed to rein it in and protect "us" from its rapacity.
So when I say this book makes me sick, it's not an indictment of the research or writing. It's because the stories, and the cumulative big story, are nauseating and depressing. On a bad day I wonder, what is human life for? Is it for a relatively small number of people to accumulate an unimaginable amount of wealth, privacy, and personal security? is it for a greater number of people to stumble along from day to day, crisis to crisis, accident to accident, failure to failure, loss to loss, relapse to relapse? It helped me understand "deaths of despair," and that's sickening.
I no longer wonder whether A----n.com is a cause or a symptom of social collapse... it's definitely a cause. But not a sole cause. As in the case of oxycontin, Purdue Pharma, and the Sackler cartel, Bezos and A----n.com couldn't do their blood-sucking work without the active support of politicians and deregulators and a corrupt legal system and the revolving door between industry and the government that's supposed to rein it in and protect "us" from its rapacity.
April 11, 2021
I think that there’s good content to write to better understand Amazon’s impact on our economy and society writ large, but MacGillis’s way of telling that story doesn’t necessarily take the most effective angle. He anchors the story through personal stories, weaving in biographies of many whose lives have been negatively affected by Amazon in some way, along with detailed histories of industry in select areas (Ohio, Baltimore). I think that it relies a bit too heavily on these anecdotes, and the throughlines are muddled at points, which I found somewhat frustrating. Still, a useful book to read to understand just how many people have been active champions of the detrimental rise of Amazon to the point of monopoly.
May 31, 2021
Fulfillment left me unfulfilled.
A very long book filled with complex issues. Its title is a play on words - fulfilling orders and fulfilling work.
A writer in a writing group I’m in suggested reading this book to better understand why supporting indie book stores over Amazon is best. I believe the topic is important and I wanted to read it to learn from it.
The scope is huge and the book too long. I listened to the audiobook - and I struggled keeping attention as it’s so dense. The personal anecdotes from different subjects might have been better as a podcast series.
It is extremely well researched and reported on, though the length of the chapters put me off. With many chapters going for well over an hour, some nearing on two, in the audiobook, I had lost track of some of the stories 30 minutes into the chapter. Chapters cover a different location and type of work in the logistics cycle.
The book’s themes include privilege, class - particularly the working class, poverty, job insecurity, racism and the infiltration of one click ordering in America. It also explores the impact of Amazon on retail and industry and the deterioration of Amazon workers’ health, finances and families, housing affordability and security.
Plus it covers the History of American production - work, wages, manufacturing, distribution and
income tax.
The end chapter - much shorter than most - looks at how Amazon boomed in Covid -due to the convenience of access. I liked this quote:
“By placing a one click order one was flattening the curve”.
Amazon saw increased employment and trade when overall employment was going down. There was a huge expansion, and smaller business suffered.
I listened to the audiobook - the narrator was dry - I found it a good one to listen to to get to sleep. I kept having to restart it, which meant it took ages to read. The content was interesting, just far too long and detailed.
A very long book filled with complex issues. Its title is a play on words - fulfilling orders and fulfilling work.
A writer in a writing group I’m in suggested reading this book to better understand why supporting indie book stores over Amazon is best. I believe the topic is important and I wanted to read it to learn from it.
The scope is huge and the book too long. I listened to the audiobook - and I struggled keeping attention as it’s so dense. The personal anecdotes from different subjects might have been better as a podcast series.
It is extremely well researched and reported on, though the length of the chapters put me off. With many chapters going for well over an hour, some nearing on two, in the audiobook, I had lost track of some of the stories 30 minutes into the chapter. Chapters cover a different location and type of work in the logistics cycle.
The book’s themes include privilege, class - particularly the working class, poverty, job insecurity, racism and the infiltration of one click ordering in America. It also explores the impact of Amazon on retail and industry and the deterioration of Amazon workers’ health, finances and families, housing affordability and security.
Plus it covers the History of American production - work, wages, manufacturing, distribution and
income tax.
The end chapter - much shorter than most - looks at how Amazon boomed in Covid -due to the convenience of access. I liked this quote:
“By placing a one click order one was flattening the curve”.
Amazon saw increased employment and trade when overall employment was going down. There was a huge expansion, and smaller business suffered.
I listened to the audiobook - the narrator was dry - I found it a good one to listen to to get to sleep. I kept having to restart it, which meant it took ages to read. The content was interesting, just far too long and detailed.
September 23, 2022
"A l'ombra d'Amazon" no és un llibre per tothom. És dens, feixuc i llarg. Però és necessari si es pretén, de certa manera, que la literatura ens faci entendre (si és possible) el nostre món. M'ha deixat sense paraules el tremendíssim treball d'investigació, les tasques de recerca, entrevistes, dades... que hi ha al darrere d'aquest assaig. Deu anys de viatges, investigacions i testimonis. És brutal la quantitat d'informació que se'ns ofereix, tota avalada i precisa.
No espereu una apologia o critiques a Amazon, aquí tot va més enllà. Va de com un negoci com aquest ha influenciat el futur de la gran potència mundial, i de retruc la nostra. Va de com la societat es veu forçada a seguir el seu ritme i, de nou, m'ha semblat original la manera de presentar-nos aquest objectiu. El periodista i autor d'aquest llibre dona veu a treballadors qualsevol per posar de manifest el canvi de xip que va suposar l'arribada de l'ecommerce al país, i com no, de la seva immediatesa.
Amazon és l'excusa: el rerefons són les desigualtats socials entre les regions del país, els preus abusius dels lloguers, les hores de viatge i desplaçaments per anar a una feina precària, etc. Com a mínim, aquest assaig aconsegueix que abans de fer clic, pensem en totes les implicacions laborals, personals, ètiques, humanístiques, tecnològiques... que suposa.
No espereu una apologia o critiques a Amazon, aquí tot va més enllà. Va de com un negoci com aquest ha influenciat el futur de la gran potència mundial, i de retruc la nostra. Va de com la societat es veu forçada a seguir el seu ritme i, de nou, m'ha semblat original la manera de presentar-nos aquest objectiu. El periodista i autor d'aquest llibre dona veu a treballadors qualsevol per posar de manifest el canvi de xip que va suposar l'arribada de l'ecommerce al país, i com no, de la seva immediatesa.
Amazon és l'excusa: el rerefons són les desigualtats socials entre les regions del país, els preus abusius dels lloguers, les hores de viatge i desplaçaments per anar a una feina precària, etc. Com a mínim, aquest assaig aconsegueix que abans de fer clic, pensem en totes les implicacions laborals, personals, ètiques, humanístiques, tecnològiques... que suposa.
June 30, 2025
Amb un ritme calmat, Alec MacGillis aborda amb profunditat les pràctiques obscures i conseqüències polítiques, econòmiques i socials de l'empresa més gran del món. El reportatge s'estructura a partir de la història de diversos testimonis, connectats directament i indirecta amb Amazon, que evidencien el joc d'influències polítiques, les males condicions laborals i la guerra bruta amb la competència i l'oposició social que han permès que Amazon es converteixi en el monstre que és actualment.
MacGillis narra d'una manera que fa que constantment mantinguis l'interès en el que estàs llegint i això no és fàcil, ja que el llibre fa canvis sobtats de localització i tema, dedicant grans extensions de text a històries aparentment desconnectades del tema principal del llibre, però que d'una manera o altra acaba relacionant. Tot i això, a tall personal, he trobat que a vegades aquestes històries serveixen més per demostrar l'extensa feina de recerca de l'autor que per aportar context necessari.
MacGillis narra d'una manera que fa que constantment mantinguis l'interès en el que estàs llegint i això no és fàcil, ja que el llibre fa canvis sobtats de localització i tema, dedicant grans extensions de text a històries aparentment desconnectades del tema principal del llibre, però que d'una manera o altra acaba relacionant. Tot i això, a tall personal, he trobat que a vegades aquestes històries serveixen més per demostrar l'extensa feina de recerca de l'autor que per aportar context necessari.
November 23, 2022
This is a fine read about Amazon, or maybe more so about how power and wealth beget more power and wealth.
A former boss once said about Amazon Prime, "I couldn't live without it," I think meaning that she didn't know how her livelihood could continue without the ability to get all her things within two days and without paying for shipping. Aside from the silliness of that literal statement, perhaps it hadn't occurred to her that she could get lots or perhaps most general things, and all things essential to survival, within 20 minutes by walking into the store down the street. Did it not occur to her because we're in a time period in which it is "cool" to have everything shipped to your house? Will that "cool" factor dissipate, and the return of markets and malls and Walmarts will return to being "cool"? Or even maybe one day it will be "cool" to not have and need so much shit.
A former boss once said about Amazon Prime, "I couldn't live without it," I think meaning that she didn't know how her livelihood could continue without the ability to get all her things within two days and without paying for shipping. Aside from the silliness of that literal statement, perhaps it hadn't occurred to her that she could get lots or perhaps most general things, and all things essential to survival, within 20 minutes by walking into the store down the street. Did it not occur to her because we're in a time period in which it is "cool" to have everything shipped to your house? Will that "cool" factor dissipate, and the return of markets and malls and Walmarts will return to being "cool"? Or even maybe one day it will be "cool" to not have and need so much shit.
March 5, 2023
Ara només tinc ganes de cremar-ho tot.
Sobre el llibre, dir que me funciona lo plantejament d’anar de lo micro a lo macro i creuar-hi la mirada històrica, però en alguns moments m’ha estat impossible seguir la teranyina de personatges i les seues vides desgraciades. Molta informació, difícil de pair. L’autor s’hi implica, però no en excés en este castell de cartes que va desfent-se, sense aturador. És xula la reflexió que fa als agraïments sobre el sentit de pertinença i que està present, en un segon pla, durant tot lo llibre.
Sobre el llibre, dir que me funciona lo plantejament d’anar de lo micro a lo macro i creuar-hi la mirada històrica, però en alguns moments m’ha estat impossible seguir la teranyina de personatges i les seues vides desgraciades. Molta informació, difícil de pair. L’autor s’hi implica, però no en excés en este castell de cartes que va desfent-se, sense aturador. És xula la reflexió que fa als agraïments sobre el sentit de pertinença i que està present, en un segon pla, durant tot lo llibre.
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