schiavenza1981 's review for:

Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America by Alec MacGillis, Stefan Alexander MacGillis

5.0

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Fulfillment, Alec MacGillis’ magnificent new book, isn’t a biography of Amazon. It’s the story of recent American history, told through the lens of the country’s most influential and consequential corporation. When we think of inequality, we think of people — but as MacGillis writes, inequality is particularly acute between America’s cities. The growth of Amazon turned sleepy Seattle into one of the most expensive cities in the country, pricing out Black and working class residents; while Baltimore’s decline neatly tracks with the rise of America’s digital, globalized economy. Workers who once held solid, middle-class jobs in factories now toil for $15 in Amazon warehouses, where they have to piss in the corner in order to avoid a fine for overlong bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, saw his net worth explode by tens of billions during the ruinous plague year.

MacGillis, one of America’s best journalists, is perfectly positioned to tell this story. His familiarity with forgotten people in forgotten places, described with enormous empathy and compassion, set him apart from correspondents who regard their compatriots with anthropological, detached curiosity. Through Amazon, America has gained the ability to order anything, anywhere, in 24 hours. But it has lost so much more.