h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Fast Food Nation is a marvelous book by Eric Schlosser, which I would highly recommend to anyone interested in the history of the hamburger, or of fast food in general. Its premise is that the rise of the fast food industry has dramatically affected not only American (and thereafter global) eating habits, but subsequently all aspects of culture, from health, to advertising, attitudes toward labor, agriculture, government. This may sound far-fetched, but I think the author does a good job. A blurb on the back of my copy called it "alarming without being alarmist", and I think that's accurate. It does not, for example, have the same strident tone as The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, a book on a related matter (the meatpacking industry) which probably had a big influence on my deision to become a vegetarian.
At any rate, if you are interested in the topic and have a strong stomach, read Fast Food Nation.

yeah, i've sampled bits of the book before i'd mentioned it in my original article, which was about the general history of fast food, but then someone suggested that i should break the article up 'cause i had enough material for several, so the book got left out in the editing process...