Alec McGinnis, Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2021. ISBN: 9780374159276.
Note: Seems a year later publisher reissued an updated edition with a somewhat more ominous title: Fulfillment: America in the Shadow of Amazon (publisher link). I do not think it is different enough to seek out.
"'They call themselves a technology company, but it's really a sweatshop,' she said. 'They have such a hold on our economy and our country'" (6).
The strength of the book is in the individual stories such as the small family owned office supply company that Amazon crushes by undercutting them for a school district's contract. There are also some terrifying moments such as a warehouse worker killed by a machine. The description of the death is pretty gruesome, but what may truly anger readers is the aftermath where OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) basically absolves Amazon of any responsibility on what can charitably be described as a technicality.
We also get a view of corruption both from Amazon and governments from municipal and city to state and federal. Towns and cities in decay, or at least weakened by manufacturing losses, bend over backwards to give Amazon all kinds of tax breaks, incentives, rebates, and other advantages the company neither needs nor deserves, advantages at the expense of their own people. Amazon naturally demands them and bullies the locations. It is a disgusting pattern of preying on the vulnerable and outright extortion. And let's not go too deep into the federal level of corruption up to and including Amazon's army of bribe agents (oops, "lobbyists") to assure they get their way regardless of who gets hurt.
After a while though, you get tired of reading about Amazon's corruption and devastation across America. Sure, news of a new warehouse or data center are found in local news, but you'll never hear about the real costs nor the people trampled under to build those facilities. In this book, just when you think Amazon can't do worse, it then does a lot worse. Reading this book can get seriously depressing at times.
It is easy for every other liberal out there to say "boycott Amazon." If you can do it to some degree, good for you, but assuming anyone else can is privileged bullshit, and I doubt anything will come to pass unless there are some serious structural changes. In reality, if you live in Bumfuck, USA, odds may be Amazon may be the supplier, often the only one, of things you want and need from house necessities to a nice thing here or there to essential medications. You think Walmart is bad, imagine places where not even Dollar General will go. Try telling Nana or some harried single mom to find affordable Christmas gifts in the middle of nowhere to boycott Amazon. . . exactly, so shut the fuck up.
But let's say a miracle happens, and you can boycott Amazon's retail operation. You also canceled Amazon Prime. You are nowhere near out of the woods yet. There is also Amazon Web Services (AWS), and that is embedded in just about any web service imaginable. You use the internet? Odds are sooner or later you will hit AWS. Odds are you are making your self-righteous Amazon boycott declaration on social media that uses AWS, so chill with the performative virtue. In the end, as I stated, unless some serious, substantial legislation, regulation, and standing up to Amazon happens, you can't really get away from the company. The company has truly built a one-click America, and Americans, through their elected officials of both parties, pretty much allowed it to happen for a few silver coins.
In the end, this is not always an easy book to read. It can get heavy at times. It can be upsetting. A strength of the book is how it humanizes the ordinary people, folks trying to make an honest and often modest living, that Amazon basically destroys without any regard nor remorse. Sure, this is a book about Amazon, but more so about America, the Bad Economy, inequality, exploitation, corruption, and a whole lot of lives ruined.
I liked the book, and I still recommend it for all libraries. For academic libraries, those with strong programs in peace and social justice, business and economics, and political science may want to acquire it. Having said that, this is a book to read once, borrow it if you can.
3 out of 5 stars.
Book qualifies for the following 2025 Reading Challenge:
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