Eric Schlosser

Eric Schlosser is an American investigative journalist and author whose books examine industries and institutions that operate out of public sight. He became widely known with Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, published in 2001. The book grew from his two-part 1998 article “Fast Food Nation” in Rolling Stone and investigated the rise of fast-food chains, especially McDonald’s, alongside meatpacking, labor, food safety, marketing, and the economic transformation of places such as Colorado Springs. Schlosser connected the industry’s standardized production systems to low-wage work, slaughterhouse conditions, and the 1992–93 Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak. He had previously written Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market (2003), a collection of three long investigations. Its title essay addresses marijuana prohibition; “In the Strawberry Fields” follows migrant farm labor in California; and “The Most Unusual Place” considers pornography’s business history in the San Fernando Valley. Rather than treating illegal markets as isolated subcultures, the book traces their connections to law enforcement, agriculture, migration, and commercial incentives. Schlosser’s Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (2013) shifted his attention to the United States’ nuclear arsenal. Centered on the 1980 explosion of a Titan II missile in a silo near Damascus, Arkansas, the book reconstructs how a dropped socket punctured the missile’s fuel tank, producing a leak and then an explosion. It also recounts the development, deployment, and accidents of American nuclear weapons, challenging assumptions that elaborate safeguards eliminate catastrophic risk. The book was adapted into the 2016 documentary Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner and based on Schlosser’s research. His reporting has appeared in publications including The Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, and The New Yorker. Schlosser was an executive producer on the 2007 film There Will Be Blood with director Paul Thomas Anderson, adapting Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil! The film starred Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview and received eight Academy Award nominations, with Day-Lewis winning best actor. Across these works, Schlosser has used narrative reporting, archival research, interviews, and case studies to explain systems through events. Fast Food Nation was made into a 2006 feature film directed by Richard Linklater, though its plot differs from the nonfiction book. His work has prompted discussion of corporate power, worker safety, public health, drug policy, and nuclear security in the United States and elsewhere since the books’ publication.