Wal-Mart

October 17, 2005
Culled from an April 2004 conference on Wal-Mart at the University of California, Santa Barbara, these essays can be redundant, but they offer stimulating perspectives on the world's largest corporation. The rise of Wal-Mart, declares editor Lichtenstein (Walter Reuther
), has been abetted by a "southernized, deunionized, post–New Deal America," a business culture in which labor costs can be squeezed, even as a company promotes loyalty via "faux classlessness." Several chapters place these phenomena in context: describing how Wal-Mart represents both an extension of and a quantum leap from previous retail giants and how it places unprecedented price pressure on its suppliers. Wal-Mart saves consumers money, the contributors argue, but only by externalizing many social and economic costs, including benefits for its workers. One provocative chapter, based on anonymous worker sources, describes a workplace atmosphere of relentless stress and understaffing. Some interesting tidbits: Wal-Mart hit a wall trying to expand in Mexico and never gained traction in Germany, in both cases because of the countries' different socioeconomic structures. A final chapter, by a union organizer, proposes a "Wal-Mart Workers Association" for this infamously antiunion company. The association would gain 13,000 members if only 1% of the Wal-Mart workforce joined.

December 1, 2005
Typically, books about Wal-Mart either blindly praise the budget behemoth or else denounce it for its race-to-the-bottom labor practices, among other things. This book does neither. Rather, editor Lichtenstein (history, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) has collected papers from a conference of the same name that was held at the Center for Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2004. The book's 12 selections are divided into three categories: -History, Culture, Capitalism, - -A Global Corporation, - and -Working at Wal-Mart. - Authors include social and labor historians, economists, anthropologists, union leaders, and management specialists. Overall, the papers are scholarly in nature and include charts, graphs, tables, and footnotes. Yet they are also accessible and interesting and provide insight into what is now the world's largest company. While not a book for leisure readers looking to learn new management secrets, it provides views of the many sectors that Wal-Mart now occupies in our lives and our (increasingly global) economy. Highly recommended for academic libraries." -Susan Hurst, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH"

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 15, 2005
In April 2004, Lichtenstein, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, did something unusual: he invited his academic colleagues to attend a seminar on the largest corporation in America--Wal-Mart. These resulting 12 essays are the culmination of that meeting. The largest employer outside the U.S. government is examined here for the first time by a consortium of scholars rather than through the lens of the typical Wall Street business press. Bethany E. Moreton explores the origins of the company in tiny Bentonville, Arkansas, and describes the behemoth of mass merchandising as a paradox of small-town values and huge corporate efficiency. Edna Bonacich and Khaleelah Hardie investigate Wal-Mart's effect on the logistics of ports and containerized shipping and critique the company for lowering labor standards, driving mom-and-pop retailers out of business, and dictating costs and packaging standards to its suppliers. Brad Seligman looks at the continuing class-action suit that alleges a culture of discrimination against women. With numerous charts and graphs that keep the data flowing, this assemblage thoroughly dissects the Wal-Mart global high-tech phenomenon through overarching historical, cultural, and economic perspectives. Lichtenstein and friends do an incredible job of balancing the wonders and horrors of the force that is Wal-Mart.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)