Showing results by narrator "Adam Chandler" in All Categories

Sadie and Max fell in love while training to be classical pianists in music school, and they’ve been chasing their dreams together ever since. Now they’ve gotten engaged and are on the verge of a bright future—until an unexpected twist throws them out of harmony. When they’re both finalists in the prestigious Van Cage piano competition, they go from being each other’s biggest fans to fierce rivals. The winner will be launched into a meteoric career as a concert pianist, but only one can take first place.

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” This phrase, arguably Thomas Edison’s most famous quote, has been drilled into the minds of generations of Americans. A fairly straightforward iteration of the idea that innovation, discovery, and ingenuity are the result of drive and grit above all, it has also come to represent much darker myths: that hard work always leads to success and that achievement is the product of individuals and not communities.

Most any honest person can own up to harboring at least one fast-food guilty pleasure. In Drive-Thru Dreams, Adam Chandler explores the inseparable link between fast food and American life for the past century. The dark underbelly of the industry’s largest players has long been scrutinized and gutted, characterized as impersonal, greedy, corporate, and worse. But, in unexpected ways, fast food is also deeply personal and emblematic of a larger-than-life image of America.