The easy thing to say about this sometimes gut-wrenching trip through the underside of the nation's fast-food industry is that once you're done you'll think twice before strolling into McDonald's or one of its numerous cohorts. Well, it's easy to say, but it may not be true.  Just a few days after finishing this broad, well-researched critique of fast food, I did walk into McDonald's with two of my kids.  Second thoughts?  Fleeting, at best.  Call me a bad parent, call me insufficiently empathetic with the low-paid transitory work force, call me indifferent to empty calories.  I will plead guilty.  It's just that the places are so convenient and the kids do enjoy it so.

Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser would likely find my behavior merely unremarkable, not abhorrent.  One of his overriding points is that no one thinks much about fast food, no matter how frequently they partake.  Fast food customers, he writes, rarely consider "where this food comes from, how it was made, what it is doing to the community around them … The whole experience is transitory and soon forgotten."

Schlosser, a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, is a strong reporter and a clear writer.  He knows how to weave individual stories into the web of generalities in order to give a heartbeat to the facts and figures he parades before us.  He ranges widely in this book.  On the fast food industry itself he explores its entrepreneurial roots, the pluses and minuses of franchising, the industry's fight against progressive labor laws, its advertising aimed at children and its international expansion.  He also explains how our fast food nation has contributed to the massive changes in ranching and meat processing as well as the health threats in our meat supply.