RaveThe Atlantica wide-ranging, impressionistic tour of a nation whose citizens’ existence has become intertwined with a single corporation ... As MacGillis notes, understanding how a single corporation became so widely and deeply entrenched requires historical perspective ... What MacGillis feels is underappreciated is the geographical remapping of wealth—and, with it, power—that the transformation has brought about ... MacGillis describes how, while rich corporations and their top employees have settled in a small number of wealthy coastal cities, the rest of the American landscape has been leached of opportunities ... These numbers document a stark divergence, but they don’t capture its human dimensions. That is MacGillis’s goal, as he explores what the erosion of power and possibility means for regular people ... In some of MacGillis’s stories, the connection to Amazon is so tenuous as to be almost indiscernible; the characters’ problems seem to arise more from larger forces, such as globalization, gentrification, and the opioid crisis, than from any one corporation’s influence ... Addressing the regional imbalances in America would be an enormous undertaking, and MacGillis doesn’t presume to offer prescriptions. But his book suggests one very big place to start: Serious workplace reforms would affect hundreds of thousands of workers, as well as help reshape the broader labor landscape.
Reeves Wiedeman
MixedThe Atlantic... propulsive ... Wiedeman writes that it is \'hard to figure out what lesson Adam, or the entrepreneurs of the future, should learn from his rise and fall.\' Is it, though? In fact, any future entrepreneur who hopes to get rich fast can draw a straightforward directive from Neumann’s experience: Emulate it. More relevant is what the rest of us should learn.
