Book Review: Fulfillment

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. 

Genre: nonfiction, business, corporations

Subgenre: Americana, economy, retail, Internet, tech, government

Format: hardcover

Source: Eastside Branch, Lexington (KY) Public Library 

 

 

"'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). 

 

This is a book ostensibly about Amazon, but not really. The author investigates and explores the impact the company has in various places and levels of society. In revealing who wins, the Real Owners, and who loses, pretty much anyone else, the author exposes the growing inequality in the United States and the real price of Amazon's path of destruction as they strengthen their monopoly without regard for consequences. 

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: 

 

Booknote: Witches of America

Alex Mar, Witches of America. New York: Sarah Crichton Books--Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2015. ISBN: 9780374291372.

Genre: nonfiction
Subgenre: paganism, witchcraft, occultism, travel, spirituality, religion, memoir.
Format: hardcover book
Source: Berea branch  of the Madison County Public Library

Alex Mar embarks on a journey to explore the  practices and traditions of modern witches, pagans, and occultists in the United States. Her focus is on how they live and practice in modern society, some out in the open and others still in the broom closet. Mar takes a five-year journey into paganism and the occult in nineteen chapters. In addition to meeting people, talking to them, studying witchcraft, and even getting initiated into an occult path, she also traces the history and rise of modern witchcraft, paganism, and a bit of occultism.

The history starts in 1950s England and comes right over the pond to the United States in places like San Francisco, New Orleans, and rural Oregon. We meet witches, disciples of Aleister Crowley, a Celtic priesthood, radical feminist Wiccans, and more. And as Mar travels, she strives to ask and answer questions we may have: what do we believe in? why do we choose to believe it? Where do we find meaning?

The book's pace starts a bit slow, but the pace soon picks up. Mar weaves a good narrative that blends experience and memoir with history. Along with her experiences, she brings in the various histories of paganism and the occult, which I found interesting. In the  end, Mar delivers an interesting and at times moving story of paganism and some of its various forms and those who practice them. I do say some for, as the author reminds us, many parts of the pagan experience are not in the book. She hopes others will go out and do their own research and write further.

For me, the only thing missing was a good bibliography. She mentions three books in her acknowledgements as crucial, and there is a footnote here or there, but I would have appreciated a list of sources, mostly for me to keep reading and exploring. By the way, the three books mentioned are:

• Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon (1979, revised 2006, and apparently in 2010 too). 
• Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon (1999). 
• Chas S. Clifton, Her Hidden Children (2006). 

Overall, this  is an excellent book. Another benefit of this book may be for pagans and witches who may feel alone or isolated reassurance others like them are out there and thriving. The book is a solid selection for public libraries. I'd also recommend it for academic libraries, and I'll be ordering a copy for our library collection. This is one of the most interesting reads I  have done recently, and it is a book that has sparked my curiosity to learn more.

5 out of 5 stars.

* * * * * 

Additional reading notes:

Many Americans are  drawn to the occult and mysterious, way  more than they care to admit:

"So is this witchy stuff or mere coincidence? I'm not sure. The world is full of strange and inexplicable business. There are many Americans-- not just out-there Americans, but high-functioning people with mainstream jobs and houses with backyards-- who have stories like those of my family. Stories of mysticism, of communications from the other side, whether handed down, hearsay, or their own. All you need to do is press a little harder, and out they come: from supermarket cashiers, retired cops, psychologists, high school jocks-- it doesn't matter where they live or what they look like. The overriding culture trains us to dismiss these stories as New Age babble, signs of wayward fanaticism, rather than greet them with a healthy dose of curiosity-- but Americans are compelled by the mysterious more often than we feel permitted to admit" (10). 

Modern study and training into witchcraft can often be online and long distance given some branches and practitioners are separated by geography. The Internet has made some things easier. Mar describes a bit of her long distance training with one of her teachers:

"I am to e-mail her weekly, by Thursday night, to be supplemented by occasional phone calls; and I'll receive lessons as password-encoded online videos. Finally, in a few months, I'm to visit her home, at my own expense, for some actual face-to-face time" (106). 

That sounds almost like a modern online class, and by the way, like other classes, she did pay for her lessons.

An observation that many witches, and pagans, while often devoted to serving others, don't always have their own lives together. This also applies to artists, and I've seen it in artists I know. To an extent, I can relate as well:

"If people are talented at spell casting, it does not immediately follow that their focus is on perfecting their own lives. Many witches are dedicated to using magic to perform a service for others, leaving their personal lives a mess-- a scenario that I've seen play out in my own world, with every kind of artist. Morpheus had her own example: 'You can have a Harvard professor who's obviously a master  in their field, but  that doesn't mean that they have a perfect grasp on how to have relationships or whatever,' she told me. 'Just because you are advanced in a certain skill does not mean that you are somehow a perfectly rounded, perfectly developed person'" (152). 

Side note: Josh, Mar's Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) teacher, also works with Santa Muerte (not in the OTO pantheon though). Here is one prayer he uses:

"Santisima Muerte! Beloved of my heart!
Do not abandon me without your protection.
Defend me from my enemies and grant me
a peaceful death.
Oh Holy Mother, hear my prayer! Amen" (202). 

That reminded me a bit of the book on Santa Muerte I recently read. Also shows how pagans can and do often blend practices and traditions.

Update note (3/19/17): Turns out that a number of pagans dislike the book to varying degrees. I recently even talked to such a pagan, and she personally loathes the book. Opinions vary, but in the end it is still an interesting memoir of a segment of the pagan community, albeit a very small segment. Keep in mind also it is written for outsiders, and that does add some value to it given many of the readings pagans often recommend are written by and for insiders. Do I recommend it still? Yes, but I do as I often say to readers, read it and decide. The book does have some flaws that deserve critique, but she also gets a lot of things right and does provide an accurate picture of paganism in public. In order to provide some balance, here are some additional reviews. The one John Halsted (from Patheos) may be most of interest:

• John Halstead, "Why Pagans Hate 'Witches of America.'" Halstead makes a good point of what the hate says about pagans, who claim to be open, transparent, and welcoming yet often use the rhetoric of other religions to those they view as traitors or even heretics. 
• A review from National Public Radio (NPR): "Enlightenment Proves Elusive in 'Witches in America.'" 
• The New York Times' review. 
• A review and discussion from The Guardian, which includes remarks by the book's author.