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Summary: Review from Publishers Weekly
Review: "First-Quarter profits at Wal-Mart stores are up nearly 40%. Company revenues are over $100 billion a year, and Wall Street is perfectly in love with the national mass merchandiser. But ask 86-year-old Texas journalist Bill Quinn what he thinks of "The World's Largest Retailer" and he'll tell you that good news for Wal-Mart is bad news for small-town America." "His News appears in his new book, How Wal-Mart is Destroying America and What You Can Do About It. Quinn has been an editor and a trade industry newsletter publisher in Texas for more than 60 years. In the book, he claims in no uncertain terms that Wal-Mart is a hypocritical economic predator that is destroying the downtown retailing economies of small-town America by lying to local governments about the company's economic benefits, shamelessly exploiting its employees and using unscrupulous but quasi-legal business practices--and that is just the first chapter. In later chapters he covers the "7 Things That Happen When Wal-Mart comes to Town"(among them are"jobs are lost"; "taxpayers pay for the disaster"; and "Wal-Mart moves on")and"7 Ways Wal-Mart is Bad to the Bone"("sweatshop labor," overcharging the consumer and "a rotten record with women and minorities"). Quinn's reports come from interviews, public records and news reports detailing the darker side of the late Sam Walton's empire. The book ends with a chapter called "12 Ways You Can Fight Back" in which Quinn outlines how to keep the retailer out--and documents communities that have succeeded."(Publishers Weekly)
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Summary: A Good Primer on the Forces that Drive Corporations
Review: A nice little book that describes exactly how a giant retailer works given the capitalist imperative to capture market share and increase shareholder dividends. Most of what the book says is obvious, but given the current euphoria over the "free market," not discussed in the main stream media. Worth reading, especially if your ideological goggles are not glued on.
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Summary: Thank you Bill Quinn.
Review: American is based on freedom,in this case the freedom of choice.When a Wal-Mart enters a town it WILL DO ANYTHING to wipe out all competition. At first that doesn't seem bad, because the prices are so low. However that only lasts until they are the only game in town. Mr. Quinn was not overstating the facts when he said the company will let nothing stand in the way of making money.As for stacking things too high; right again! They fill every inch of space possible ; out front and in back. I should know I used to be told to do it.There is a lot more to say, but, read the book, and believe it!
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Summary: What A Book, A Must Read........
Review: Bill may have been a little excessive in 1 or 2 instances in this book, but otherwise his examples were precise, well documented, and accurate. I found the book to be alarmingly true and valid about the schmucks from Bentonville. It will validate what you probably already know, but get a little more fired up. Read this book and you will think twice as a city before letting Wal-Mart in your town or think twice before stepping in one to shop. Learn about what Wal-Mart does because it defies capitalism, their pre-fab ways and consolidation are down-right socialist. With Slick Willy and Wal-Mart, I'm starting to wonder if anything good comes out of Arkansas.
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Summary: A different way of thinking about giant box retailers.
Review: Bill Quinn has researched his subject for an extended period and continuely reached the same conclusion; Walmart is effectively an insensitive hipocritive organization. This book is an early warning sign of a gaint about to fall. This book will keep you on your toes as an investor or competitor or consumer when tracking information about various retailers. Quinn writes like he talks. He doesn't hold back expressing his deepest thoughts about a subject. Especially a subject like Walmart, that directly and indirectly has negatively inpacted his pocket book.
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Summary: Disorganized Hearsay (mostly)
Review: Bill Quinn has written this book in a very disjointed and disorganized manner. In addition, a lot of the information in the book seems to be based on anecdotes by disgruntled Wal-Mart haters. Could have been better organized and used more research-based facts.
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Summary: Can you say "Evil Empire"?
Review: Bill Quinn is a feisty 88-year-old newspaperman who admits to being on a crusade to bring down the world's largest retailer: Wal-Mart. This new edition of his anti-Wal-Mart manifesto is a lively and frightening read. It tends to be short on documentation at times, too often building its case on anecdote, and hearsay. But there are other sources (for example, Barbara Erhenreich's recent *Nickle and Dimed*) that complement and corroborate many of Quinn's claims. According to Quinn, the basic business philosophy of Wal-Mart is "Stomp the Comp!" (this seems to actually be a Wal-Mart managerial cheer). Sam Walton's attitude was to obliterate the competition. Sharing the market with competitors is for chumps who don't want to be #1. But in order to stomp the comp, Wal-Mart doesn't sell at rock bottom prices, despite its advertising claims. (If you doubt this, do a little comparison shopping and you'll discover that in fact Wal-Mart isn't the cheapest game going. But be careful: Quinn says that comparison shoppers have been escorted out of Wal-Marts because they were seen jotting down prices in notebooks.) Rather, it ruthlessly cuts overhead, and that means paying workers minimum wage, hiring most of its employees on a part time basis so that it doesn't have to worry about benefits, making its fulltime employees pay half of their benefits cost if they opt for insurance, insisting on discounts from vendors as conditions for doing business with them, buying cheap merchandise stitched together in third world sweat shops (remember Kathy Lee Gifford?), busting unionization efforts, and occasionally repackaging and reselling returned, defective merchandise. Most of us probably aren't aware of these internal shenanigans. But all of us know what Wal-Mart does to local communities when it moves in. The national strategy has always been to target rural areas, overwhelm with an advertizing blitz, stomp the comp, and control the market. In the process, local businesses go bankrupt and folks lose their jobs, only to be offered part time, minimum wage work at the local Wal-Mart that's now the only game in town. Quinn shows how this pattern of seize and conquer is characteristic of the Wal-Mart approach. He also reveals the next, frightening stage of Wal-Mart evolution: consolidated Wal-Marts, even bigger and "better". The national plan is this: the old Wal-Marts that have drained downtowns in rural areas are now going to close shop and consolidate in huge Wal-Marts, leaving more empty buildings, putting people out of work once again, leaving dead downtowns in their wake, and forcing consumers to use more gasoline to drive to them. Thanks, Sam! Take a chance on this book. Read it, think about it, talk to your family and neighbors about it. And take back your community by saying "no!' to Wal-Mart.
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Summary: A little over the top
Review: Bill Quinn wrote this book because he hates Wal-mart. And there certainly are genuine criticisms to be made. For example, there is Wal-mart's phony "Buy American" campaign (during which this reviewer found them selling "Ameri-co" shirts made in Malaysia). This book discusses the "Buy America" campaign at length. Other topics include the various lawsuits against Wal-mart, and its hard-line dealings with suppliers. However, I think Mr. Quinn doth protest too much. He blames Wal-mart when a customer slips on a cough drop in a store and falls, and when another customer is raped in a Wal-mart parking lot, and when another customer purchases a gun by lying on the purchase form. In such cases, Mr. Quinn desperately needs a reality check.
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Summary: A Voice in the Wilderness?
Review: Clearly, Bill Quinn and many other people have an axe to grind with the Bentonville retailing giant. Augmenting his own experience and observations with the testimony of others (some anonymous and some not), Quinn succeeds in knocking the corporate behemoth down by a peg or two. By now, most people are aware of the effect that Wal-Mart has had on small town America, but you may not be aware of some of the tactics they have used in their quest for dominance. It's never been a secret that Wal-Mart can be a particularly aggressive competitor, but the degree of organized hypocrisy that appears to drive these people makes one long for the days of the equally ruthless but less folksy robber barons of yore -- the capitalistic aristocracy of Rockefeller, Gould, Vanderbilt and Carnegie. It all makes for a fascinating book, one that I would have rated much higher were it not for the slightly adolescent sarcasm that runs throughout. I might also quibble a bit with the organization of Quinn's material, but I'll give him bonus points for guts, perspective and a preponderance of evidence.
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Summary: Whew! Get a life people!!!
Review: did you read these summaries? what junk! I'm sure the wal-mart in texas employs more than the retail stores it put out and allows the citizens to retain more of their money. Now, instead of being a drag on the economy, you can actually contribute. I guess they don't realize that wal-mart is (at least about a week ago) the largest american employer in the US besides the Government. "They should sign a book entitled "How to get ANYTHING published"
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