Fulfillment

December 7, 2020
ProPublica journalist MacGillis (The Cynic) delivers a probing, character-driven report on Amazon’s impact on the American economy and labor practices. His profile subjects include a worker at an Amazon warehouse in Thornton, Colo., who has moved into his basement out of fear he will contract Covid-19 and transmit it to his high-risk mother-in-law, and a family in Dayton, Ohio, living in a homeless shelter after the father lost his $12 per hour job at a company that sells 140,000 tons of cardboard annually to Amazon. Meanwhile, MacGillis points out, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s fortune increased by tens of billions due to the pandemic, and the company got millions of dollars in tax credits to open a fulfillment center near Dayton. MacGillis also accuses the Washington Post, which Bezos owns, of subjecting Amazon’s plans to open headquarters in New York City and the Washington metro area to “less scrutiny” than the New York Times did. (The company abandoned its New York plans.) MacGillis gathers copious evidence that Amazon and other tech companies have disadvantaged American workers, yet he resists sermonizing in order to let readers draw their own conclusions. This cogent and wide-ranging study sounds the alarm bells.

February 1, 2021
ProPublica senior reporter MacGillis tallies the hidden costs of Amazon's influence on the American economy and workforce. In a report that pulls back the curtain on some of Amazon's less well-known policies and practices, the author writes that the net worth of CEO Jeff Bezos increased by an astounding $25 billion in just two weeks early in the pandemic. MacGillis casts that wealth as an example of the "winner-take-all economy" that has sprung up in a handful of U.S. regions as tech giants have moved in, often at the expense of local residents or institutions. Drawing on interviews with Amazon workers and other sources, the author excels at showing how the Seattle-based company plays communities against one another in seeking sites for new facilities that may promise only modest job growth. That happened most notably during its search for a second headquarters--"a grand nationwide reality show, a Bachelor for cities to compete for the affection of a corporation"--before the company gave up on New York and chose the D.C. metro area. Even smaller cities may feel the pressure to offer the company outsized tax exemptions or other concessions. Ohio gave Amazon a $270,000 tax credit to turn a former Chrysler plant in Twinsburg into a sorting facility with only 10 full-time jobs (though with many more part-time holiday workers): "Twinsburg added a seven-year 50 percent property tax exemption that would cost it $600,000, most of which would have gone toward its schools." In showing the human costs of all of this, MacGillis at times relies on overlong profiles of or unedifying quotes about Amazon's corporate casualties ("I want people to know he was a great dad"; "It still hasn't really sunk in that my brother is gone"). Nonetheless, the book abounds with useful information for anyone weighing the costs and benefits of having an online behemoth come to town. A sobering portrait of how Amazon is remaking America.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 15, 2021
ProPublica reporter MacGillis, a biographer of Mitch McConnell in The Cynic (2014), here offers a probing, panoramic view of the socioeconomic state of the U.S. through the lens of its most ubiquitous company. Rather than a history of Amazon, though, this is MacGillis' effort ""to take a closer look at the America that fell in the company's lengthening shadow."" Encompassing histories of labor, manufacturing, lobbying, and technology and addressing the country's growing inequalities in wealth and housing, MacGillis' guide to this America is heavily detailed and filled with staggering stories and figures. Across the country, he ties cities to the places they used to be--both Amazon's Seattle, where median home prices recently doubled in a five-year period, and places like Sparrows Point, a former Baltimore County steel town that's now home to two Amazon warehouses. Always returning to that ""shadow,"" in each place MacGillis shares the stories of individuals. MacGillis' sprawling, fascinating account presses pause on the continuously unfurling effects of a monolithic company on not only our consumption, but also our livelihoods, communities, and government.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 28, 2021

Journalist MacGillis uncompromisingly reveals how quickly and completely Amazon revolutionized aspects of the U.S. economy and society without many participants in the changes even noticing. Focusing on people in a handful of racially diverse communities across the country (including Seattle, El Paso, Baltimore, rural Ohio, and suburban Virginia), this book makes clear the scope of Amazon-induced changes, but doesn't get too bogged down in complexities of the business operations of this vast and complex corporation. Amazon successfully exploited vulnerabilities inherent in weakened relationships in business, government, labor, and social networks during the first decade of the 21st century, according to MacGillis. The allure of working with or for Amazon frequently coincided with diminished options for laborers, suppliers, businesses, and local governments, who often found they were working against their own interests. MacGillis's narrative is full of anecdotes and solid factual evidence that ground his discussions of supply chains, data centers, logistics, warehouses, and fulfillment centers. He also tells of people who attempted to resist the seemingly irresistible transformations. These people were the exceptions and not the rule, MacGillis writes, as Americans at all levels conceded--sometimes reluctantly, often enthusiastically--to Amazon's successful expansion, domination, and destruction of individuality and community. VERDICT Superb journalism makes this an uncomfortable but essential read for understanding Amazon and the United States today.--Charles K. Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato

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