How Walmart Is Destroying America And The World: And What You Can Do About It | 
| Author: Bill Quinn
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Category: Book
List Price: $10.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  52 reviews
Sales Rank: 237708
Media: Paperback
Edition: 3 Rev Upd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 158
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 1580086683
Dewey Decimal Number: 381.1490973
EAN: 9781580086684
Publication Date: April 2005
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Product Description
After carving up the once lovingly cared-for downtowns of Small Town America, Wal-Mart launched a frontal assault on small businesses all over the globe. With 1.5 million employees operating more than 3,500 stores, Wal-Mart is now the world's largest private employer. In this third edition of How Wal-Mart is Destroying America (and the World), intrepid Texas newspaperman Bill Quinn continues the fight, detailing Wal-Mart's questionable business practices, and much more.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 47 more reviews...
 Wal-Mart prdjecct June 19, 2008
ok here is the deal. i do not like this store but i had to do a report on it and in that respect it was a good source of information for what i was trying to conclude.
how walmart is desrtoying America (and the world) April 6, 2008
Everyone who loves their country should read this book. If walmart were wiped off the planet, our country's financial problems would go away overnight.
 Good For a Quick Overview of the Way W Mart Operates January 8, 2008
The author of this book is definitely biased against W-Mart, which is not necessarily a bad thing. As long as the author is open and up front about the bias, the reader can judge the validity of the argument by themselves.
The book is not an in depth look at the worlds largest retailer, but rather a primer on how W-Mart operates, how they treat employees, how they bully their way into communities and the like. If you are looking for a good overview, then this would be a good book.
The book is short, and the writing is fairly simple, making this a quick read. If W-Mart is coming to town, this may be a good book for the citizen groups to read. Just remember that there are much more detailed books on the company available.
pamphlet that accuses Wal-Mart of, well, everything BAD January 3, 2006
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
This is an activists' handbook for those who want to attack Wal-Mart, which is not only the world's biggest retailer but the world's largest nongovernmental employer. The author sees Wal-Mart as bearing the principal responsibility for an awful lot of terrible things that are happening to small-town America and that are now spilling into the rest of the world as WM invests in stores overseas.
There is no denying that WM is a catalyst for a lot of distrubing trends: the use of scale economies to underbid mom&pop shops in America's rural areas, its transforming impact on communities (heavier traffic, depopulation of traditional downtown areas, etc), its heavy-handed approach to negotiations with sometimes desperate local authorities, and lastly, its use of near-minimum wage labor while crushing labor union activity in its stores.
But as a catalyst, it is much more the instrument of fundamental economic forces - globalisation and also vast integrated operational networks - than the sole or even the governing cause. In my view, that throws the questions into the political arena. Sure, you can attack WM, but what its managers are doing only makes business sense to them: expand shops that are incredibly profitable while selling at far lower prices than traditional outlets could because they lack the scale and organization of WM. That cannot be fought at the moment.
The bottom line then becomes: WM will continue to win unless there is some kind of concerted political action that changes the fundamental economic logic that is operating behind it - and that is way beyond just blocking the change of zoning laws or boycotting the company. I am not arguing that WM's impact is good or inevitable and unstoppable, but that the current economic environment favors it.
As such, I believe this book fails to look at most of the deeper problems. Instead, the reader is served up with a simplistic villain, WM, and urged to protest and buy elsewhere. The assumption is: get rid of WM and we can go a long way back to how things were. Alas, that is a strawman.
What we need to do is change the playing field. And this book will not help much in that. WM and its imitators need to be regulated and channeled into certain areas of competition that are less destructive to traditional communities and their economies, and that is as complicated and difficult to effect as it would sound. Of course, WM must also be forced to provide healthcare, allow unionization, and take the environment into consideration in its decisions.
Nonetheless, from the evidence as it appears to me, WM has not yet become a responsive corporate citizen. THe incredible size and power that it has attained is a relatively recent phenomenon, and there are many managers inside of it who are arguing that it needs to change, including CEO Lee Scott. But it needs to evolve and pay attention to what the outside world thinks of its practices, which leave a lot to be desired to put it mildly. That is where protest comes in and where books like this have a vital part to play. If WM leaders are smart, they will see that it makes business sense for them to listen to consumers and adapt their practices as far as they can while maintaining profitability.
Later, if the company has a culture that is capable of learning, the protests may become a more productive kind of negotiation, as it has with some companies such as adidas or even McDonald's. But to blame everything on just one company is as silly as holding McDonald's alone as responsible for America's obesity epidemic - they play a role to be sure, but are only cogs in a far greater economic and cultural phenomenon.
Recommended as this is a piece of the debate, but it is badly incomplete and simplistic.
Some good points made; but.... December 9, 2005
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
This book caught my eye at a rummage sale for twenty-five cents. Many folks on my wife's side of the family are big supporters of Wal-Mart, so naturally when I brought this book home my wife wanted nothing to do with it. I'm indifferent to the large retailer, so I kept an open mind, and decided to read it anyway.
The book's biggest problem is that Quinn spends too much time ranting and raving about how horrible Wal-Mart is. It's like listening to a cantankerous old man who just got fired from his position as a Wal-Mart greeter. Sure, he raises some good points, but Wal-Mart does not need to "Burn in Hell" as it seems he wishes it would.
If the author wants to point out how Wal-Mart is destroying America, he out to provide solutions and alternatives to the problem. So you hate Wal-Mart...okay; we've established that. Now how about telling me some actual good things the retailer is doing? There are very few things in the world that are totally corrupt, and Wal-Mart is not one of them. Wal-Mart has good and bad points, and not pointing out some of it's good points is what makes this book's bias so distasteful.
While the book will give you pause, I doubt this will be a thorn in Wal-Mart's side. The book is just too personal. It reminds me of a child who was picked on by a school bully, and now he is crying to his parents instead of confronting the problem head-on.
If you don't want to shop at Wal-Mart, then don't! There's not one thing you can buy at Wal-Mart that you can't get somewhere else. You don't need a 165 page book to tell you that.
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