Selling 'em by the Sack White Castle and the Creation of American Food

"A fascinating story ...Hogan tells a truly American success story--luck and hard work behind one man to create an industry so pervasive that today it's an integral part of American pop culture." --Publishers Weekly "Hogan makes a convincing case for White Castle's influence." --Jonathan Yardley Washington Post "A scholar's lively account of how White Castle, now a largely overlooked but still profitable also-ran in the domestic restaurant trade, made the once-scorned hamburger a U.S. institution and launched the fast-food industry... Informed and engaging perspectives on an often ignored aspect of cultural and commercial Americana." --Kirkus Reviews "Full of fascinating details, not only for devotees of the ubiquitous 'slider,' but also for pop-culturists interested in American fast food and how it all got started." --Minneapolis Star Tribune "David Hogan's love of fast food goes back at least twenty years: I remember talking to him while he gulped down a McDonald's before the start of class. Few historians I know would be able to translate their penchant for fast food into a wonderful case study of the first chain to sell huge numbers of hamburgers-to-go. Selling 'em by the Sack, which traces the fortunes and failures of White Castle from the 1920s to the 1990s, deftly blends biography, social history, and corporate history. In doing so, Hogan gives us a fascinating glimpse into American popular culture." --W. Andrew Achenbaum Professor of History, University of Michigan