The Retail Revolution How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business [Paperback]

Wal-Mart is the world's largest company and it sets the standard--both social and commercial--for a huge swath of the global economy. In this probing investigation, historian Nelson Lichtenstein shows how the company's success has spread evangelical Protestantism into the workplace, made South China an American workshop, and pushed American politics to the right. At the same time, he anticipates a day of reckoning, when challenges to the Wal-Mart way, at home and abroad, are likely to change the far-flung empire. Insightful and original,The Retail Revolutiongives a fresh and necessary understanding of the phenomenon that has reshaped international commerce.

Nelson Lichtensteinis one of the country's leading experts on labor and politics and the editor of a much-cited collection of essays on Wal-Mart. A professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy, he is also the author of several highly regarded books on American history, including the award-winningWalter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit.

A terrific book... Lichtenstein does a beautiful job of putting Wal-Mart in its historical context... A definitive account not only of Wal-Mart's past but also of the forces shaping its future. Los Angeles Times

Nelson Lichtenstein has writtenthebook on Wal-Mart. You can read it as a sober indictment of the rogue company that happens also to be the world's largest corporation. Or you can read it as a brilliantly reported case study in what's gone wrong with the American--and the global--economy. Either way, you will read it, as I did, with complete fascination. Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed

Offers penetrating insights& Lichtenstein sheds valuable light on the technological reasons for Wal-Mart's success& and provides a detailed look at the dark side of the company's employment practiceslÓ3