Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America

An inquiry into the wealth and poverty of regions, with one company at its core They had their orders, they stopped for nothing. They were carrying a billion dollars, and such a sum of money cannot manifest either sympathy or curiosity; it has enough to do to take care of itself.The year was 1937, and Upton Sinclair had just completed a novel bearing the subtitle A Story of Ford-America. 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.Alec MacGillis’s Fulfillment is not another inside account or impassioned indictment of our most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a beautifully wrought study 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 ci