The WalMart Effect, Charles Fishman
The WalMart Effect, Charles Fishman
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The Wal-Mart Effect
How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--and How It's Transforming the American Economy

Author: Charles Fishman

Narrator: Charles Fishman, Alan Sklar

Unabridged: 10 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/15/2006


Synopsis

The Wal-Mart Effect: The overwhelming impact of the world's largest company—due to its relentless pursuit of low prices—on retailers and manufacturers, wages and jobs, the culture of shopping, the shape of our communities, and the environment; a global force of unprecedented nature. Wal-Mart is not only the world's largest company; it is also the largest company in the history of the world. Americans spend $26 million every hour at Wal-Mart, twenty-four hours of every day, every day of the year. Is the company a good thing or a bad thing? On the one hand, market guru Warren Buffett estimates that the company's low prices save American consumers $10 billion a year. On the other, the behemoth is the number-one employer in thirty-seven of the fifty states yet has never let a union in the door.

Though 70 percent of Americans now live within a fifteen-minute drive of a Wal-Mart store, we have not even begun to understand the true power of the company and the many ways it is shaping American life. We know about the lawsuits and the labor protests, but what we don't know is how profoundly the "Wal-Mart effect" is shaping our lives.

Fast Company senior editor Charles Fishman takes us on an unprecedented behind-the-scenes investigative expedition deep inside the many worlds of Wal-Mart. He reveals the radical ways in which the company is transforming America's economy, our workforce, our communities, and our environment. Fishman penetrated the secrecy of Wal-Mart headquarters, interviewing twenty-five high-level former executives; he entered into the world of a host of Wal-Mart's suppliers to uncover how the company strong-arms even the most established brands; and journeyed to the ports and factories, the fields and forests where Wal-Mart's power is warping the very structure of the world's market for goods. Wal-Mart is not just a retailer anymore, Fishman argues. It has become a kind of economic ecosystem, and anyone who wants to understand the forces shaping our world today must understand the company's hidden reach.

About Charles Fishman

Charles Fishman is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Wal-Mart Effect, a finalist for the Goldman Sachs-Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award. A former metro and national reporter for the Washington Post, he has worked for the innovative business magazine Fast Company since 1996. Charles has won numerous awards, including UCLA's Gerald Loeb Award for outstanding business writing, the most prestigious award in business journalism. He has appeared regularly on NPR, CNN, and Fox News.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Pige

Having a family in the grocery business (and being a product of one of the most economically distraught states in the country-Michigan) of course likely aroused my interest in this book more than most. But, as the book so thoughtfully and throughly puts forward, Wal-Mart truly affects us all, whethe......more

Goodreads review by Stephen

The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works, and How It's Transforming the American Economy © 2006 Charles Fishman 352 pages In only a little over fifty years, Wal-Mart has grown from a small five-and-dime store in rural Arkansas to an outright goliath, dominating the Americ......more

Goodreads review by Thomas

I feel like I know so much more about Wal-Mart now. This book goes out of its way to show both sides of the Wal-Mart story. But those sides tend to be Pro Wal-Mart city people and Anti Wal-Mart city people. The author describes Wal-Mart as a terrible shopping experience and the kind of place you onl......more