CANR
WORK TITLE: 99 Percent Perspiration
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.adamchandler.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
LAST VOLUME:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and writer. Worked at the Atlantic Monthly as a staff writer; is a recurring guest on the History Channel’s The Food That Built America and also appears on numerous television and radio shows.
WRITINGS
Contributor to numerous magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, WIRED, Vox, Slate, New York Magazine, Texas Monthly, Esquire, and TIME.
SIDELIGHTS
[OPEN NEW]
Adam Chandler is a journalist and author. He has worked as a staff writer at the Atlantic Monthly and has contributed articles and essays to numerous publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Esquire. He is also a frequent guest on a variety of television and radio shows, including the History Channel’s The Food That Built America.
Food and especially fast food is the subject of Chandler’s first book, Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey through the Heart of America’s Fast-Food Kingdom. In this pop-culture analysis, Chandler writes how fast food and life in the United States have been linked for the past one hundred years. Some of these are negative aspects, such as U.S. population growing less and less healthy combined with a corporate takeover of how we eat. Chandler also points out, however, that fast food creates passionate fans, and he explores why that is along with some of the country’s most iconic fast food marketing and images.
Roger Bishop, writing in BookPage, called the book “enlightening and fun-to-read.” Bishop suggested that fast-food fans will especially find it “a book to savor.” Writing in Booklist, Mark Knoblauch also found the book enjoyable. He particularly appreciated the “host of anecdotes about some ever-fascinating individuals,” often the founders of small companies that turned into big ones. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly agreed with both of those assessments, describing the book as a “fun, argumentative, and frequently surprising pop history.” They predicted it “will thrill and educate food lovers of all speeds.”
Chandler’s follow-up, 99% Perspiration: A New Working History of the American Way of Life, is a more serious and comprehensive look at American culture, particularly whether the American way of life can continue as there becomes a greater separation between the haves and have nots. Chandler writes about how Americans used to believe that as long as they worked hard, they would be successful, but that dream seems less feasible now. He combines interviews with ordinary Americans with an analysis of how the country’s economy has changed, and he then offers suggestions for how things might improve. “A welcome call for a return to fairness and common sense,” wrote a contributor in Kirkus Reviews.
[CLOSE NEW]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 1, 2019, Mark Knoblauch, review of Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey through the Heart of America’s Fast-Food Kingdom, p. 57.
BookPage, July, 2019, Roger Bishop, review of Drive-Thru Dreams.
Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2024, review of 99% Perspiration: A New Working History of the American Way of Life.
Publishers Weekly, April 29, 2019, review of Drive-Thru Dreams, p. 77.
ONLINE
Adam Chandler website, https://www.adamchandler.com (March 13, 2025).
Adam Chandler is a journalist and author based in New York. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, WIRED, Vox, Slate, New York Magazine, Texas Monthly, Esquire, TIME, and elsewhere. Chandler is the author of Drive-Thru Dreams. His second book, 99% Perspiration, was published by Pantheon Books in 2025.
Previously, Chandler served as a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covered business, culture, politics, and foreign affairs. In addition to stints at start-ups, non-profits, and in publishing, Chandler also tended bar for six years at The Brandy Library, Fresh Salt, Lexington Bar & Books, and West 3rd Common. (He has been generously credited with introducing at least two patrons to their future spouses.)
He has appeared across television, radio, and digital platforms including five seasons of The History Channel’s The Food That Built America as well as Modern Marvels, The Today Show, Hardball, CBS Sunday Morning, National Geographic’s The ‘80s, BBC’s World News America and Context, and NPR’s Morning Edition, Planet Money, 1A, and On Point.
Chandler grew up in Houston, Texas, and is a graduate of George Washington University and the MFA Creative Nonfiction Program at Sarah Lawrence College. At least one of his stories has been mocked during a live New York Mets broadcast.
Chandler, Adam 99% PERSPIRATION Pantheon (NonFiction None) $28.00 1, 7 ISBN: 9780593700570
A respected journalist explores the evolution of work and its social meaning.
Work has always been a central part of the American character, with the idea that success comes from effort, persistence, and ingenuity. But Chandler, a journalist and an author, argues that much of this is a myth. Climbing the socioeconomic ladder has never been as easy or as common as its advocates claim, and in the past two decades it has become almost impossible. The majority of working Americans are stuck in low-income jobs, Chandler says, and job security has been replaced by unfair contracts and the gig economy. He covered some of these issues in his 2019 book,Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom, and it is certainly true that the minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation. As we saw during the pandemic, it made more financial sense for many to collect unemployment benefits and stimulus checks than to look for work. The book can at times make for grim reading, but Chandler argues that social crises have often presaged wide-ranging reforms. He favors a Universal Basic Income, although there does not yet appear to be much support for it. However, his thesis is valid: Work is simply not working--for many, if not most, Americans. Some new thinking is needed.
A welcome call for a return to fairness and common sense.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Chandler, Adam: 99% PERSPIRATION." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A815560482/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2eaf8743. Accessed 27 Feb. 2025.
Drive-Thru Dreams
By Adam Chandler
Eating fast food unites almost all Americans and, increasingly, many millions more throughout the world. From fast food's modest origins in the early decades of the 20th century to the huge industry it has become today, we can trace the history of the United States through the development of this popular American institution. With the ability to adapt to changing tastes and trends, to meet the public's need for something to eat that's generally inexpensive, quick and the same every time you order it, fast food has become a permanent part of American culture.
In his enlightening and fun-to-read Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom (Flatiron, $27.99, 9781250090720, audio/eBook available), Adam Chandler explores the complex industry that sprang from fry cook Walt Anderson's "invention" of the hamburger in Wichita, Kansas, in 1916. Anderson's partnership with real estate developer Billy Ingram led to the establishment of White Castle restaurants, which continue to thrive today and even celebrate their most loyal fans in their Cravers Hall of Fame.
The founders of many fast-food companies came from modest backgrounds, but through sheer determination, hard work and good luck, they achieved success. Colonel Harland Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken is the most representative of the American dream in this regard. Despite setbacks that would discourage most people, his secret recipe, colorful personality and keen marketing skills propelled him to succeed.
Ray Kroc was so impressed by the hamburger stand created by Dick and Mac McDonald in California that he bought it from them, and McDonald's eventually became the greatest fast-food success story of all. Kroc, a former sales representative of paper cups and milkshake machines, was "exacting, fastidious, and cruel" and took pride in saying he made more millionaires than anyone else in the United States.
There is much more here about customer loyalty and fast-food restaurants as meeting places. Based on interviews and careful research, this is a book to savor, especially if you're a fast-food fan.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Bishop, Roger. "Drive-Thru Dreams." BookPage, July 2019, pp. 25+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A592040329/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=19fe343b. Accessed 27 Feb. 2025.
Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom. By Adam Chandler. June 2019. 288p. Flatiron, $27.99 (9781250090720); e-book, $14.99 (9781250090737). 641.8.
Ubiquitous though fast food restaurants have become across the American landscape, their popularity doesn't shield them from opprobrium from nutritionists and other detractors, who blame these establishments for a host of ills from America's obesity health crisis to the destruction of landscapes and even the general decline of table manners. But before anyone casts judgment upon fast food, Chandler asks readers to take a much closer look at all the outcomes and influences of this industry, how these businesses both provide employment and act as equalizing venues of social interaction. Fast food's transformative power extends worldwide, to the point that KFC has turned Christmas into a major holiday in non-Christian Japan. White Castle, the original burger joint, was founded in part to deflect Americans' wariness of ground meat after the revelations of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1904). In Chandler's version of the narrative, these corporate behemoths are still made up of people. He shares a host of anecdotes about some ever-fascinating individuals, from servers to CEO's--perhaps most notably in the tale of delicious vengeance by Aslam Khan, once spurned for a job at Church's Fried Chicken and later hired as an executive for the company. --Mark Knoblauch
YA: Chandler tells about teens who built on what they learned from their behind-the-counter jobs to go on to fame and fortune in all walks of life. MK.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Knoblauch, Mark. "Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 17, 1 May 2019, p. 57. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A587366786/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ebeabbcd. Accessed 27 Feb. 2025.
Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom
Adam Chandler. Flatiron, $14.99 trade paper (256p) ISBN 978-1-250-09072-0
Everybody, "no matter how refined the palate or how anointed the social status," has a fast food pleasure, freelance writer Chandler states in his perceptive cultural history of the restaurants he identifies as a quintessentially American innovation. The book begins in a flurry of vivid portraiture of the genre's titanic innovators. These tales of larger-than-life individuals--including the cussing-and-cooking "ham who served chicken" caricature Harlan Sanders (Kentucky Fried Chicken) and the famously "cruel" yet meticulously meritocratic Ray Kroc (McDonald's)--start as glorious capitalist pirate tales but end with those idiosyncratic visions being "swallowed up by the burgeoning corporate state." Chandler shows how the democratic spread of cheap, fast food reflects different periods in American history, from the prewar Upton Sinclair--inspired push for clean industrialized dining, to the postwar sprawl of prosperous highway-linked suburbs, and ultimately to the current divide over "interpretations of purity" in what constitutes healthy fast food. He throws cold water on the idea that "fast casual" eateries such as Chipotle are anything new, pointing out that their clean-looking aesthetic just harkens back to the industrial appeal of hamburger restaurants such as White Castle. This fun, argumentative, and frequently surprising pop history of American fast food will thrill and educate food lovers of all speeds. (June)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom." Publishers Weekly, vol. 266, no. 17, 29 Apr. 2019, p. 77. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A584497886/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=bdd231e2. Accessed 27 Feb. 2025.