An exploration of the fast food industry in the United States, from its roots to its long-term consequences.

“This is a book to savor, especially if you’re a fast-food fan.”—Bookpage "This fun, argumentative, and frequently surprising pop history of American fast food will thrill and educate food lovers of all speeds." —Publishers Weekly Most any honest person can own up to harboring at least one fast-food guilty pleasure. In Drive-Thru Dreams, Adam Chandler explores the inseparable link between fast food and American life for the past century. The dark underbelly of the industry’s largest players has long been scrutinized and gutted, characterized as impersonal, greedy, corporate, and worse. But, in unexpected ways, fast food is also deeply personal and emblematic of a larger than life image of America. With wit and nuance, Chandler reveals the complexities of this industry through heartfelt anecdotes and fascinating trivia as well as interviews with fans, executives, and workers. He traces the industry from its roots in Wichita, where White Castle became the first fast food chain in 1921 and successfully branded the hamburger as the official all-American meal, to a teenager's 2017 plea for a year’s supply of Wendy’s chicken nuggets, which united the internet to generate the most viral tweet of all time. Drive-Thru Dreams by Adam Chandler tells an intimate and contemporary story of America—its humble beginning, its innovations and failures, its international charisma, and its regional identities—through its beloved roadside fare.

Featuring a new chapter on ten restaurants changing America today, a “fascinating . . . sweep through centuries of food culture” (Washington Post). Combining an historian’s rigor with a food enthusiast’s palate, Paul Freedman’s seminal and highly entertaining Ten Restaurants That Changed America reveals how the history of our restaurants reflects nothing less than the history of America itself. Whether charting the rise of our love affair with Chinese food through San Francisco’s fabled Mandarin; evoking the poignant nostalgia of Howard Johnson’s, the beloved roadside chain that foreshadowed the pandemic of McDonald’s; or chronicling the convivial lunchtime crowd at Schrafft’s, the first dining establishment to cater to women’s tastes, Freedman uses each restaurant to reveal a wider story of race and class, immigration and assimilation. “As much about the contradictions and contrasts in this country as it is about its places to eat” (The New Yorker), Ten Restaurants That Changed America is a “must-read” (Eater) that proves “essential for anyone who cares about where they go to dinner” (Wall Street Journal Magazine).

“Finally back in print, Flash in the Pan is the original—and still the best—reportage on the life and death of an American restaurant, a ground level view of every phase of its life. From the early, hope filled planning stages to the last, humiliating moments, it's a tragi-comic epic of hubris and human folly. Painfully hilarious and even more painfully true. This is a welcome reissue of a restaurant classic that should be read by every culinary and food service student in America and sit comfortably next to Orwell's Down and Out on every shelf.” —Anthony Bourdain, author of Kitchen Confidential In 1990, journalist David Blum got backstage access to the life and death of The Falls, a downtown Manhattan restaurant that captured the 1980s in all its extravagant excess. Its owners—a tanned, Brahmin barkeep and a handsome Irish firefighter from Queens—partnered with movie star pal Matt Dillon to cater to New York's most glamorous models, actors, and writers. Flash in the Pan captured in hilarious detail the quick decline and disastrous fall of The Falls, and has become a classic cautionary tale for anyone who might harbor the fantasy of opening a restaurant. David Blum is the editor of Kindle Singles, the storefront for high quality longform writing on Kindle. He was previously the editor in chief of The Village Voice and has written for New York magazine, Esquire, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. Flash in the Pan, first published in 1992, was his first book.