Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, and a New Yorker best book of 2024, a “startling glimpse into the meatpacking industry’s abuse of undocumented and incarcerated workers” ( The New York Times Book Review ) and those who had the courage to fight back. On June 27, 2011, a deadly chemical accident took place inside the Tyson Foods chicken processing plant in Springdale, Arkansas, where the company is headquartered. The company urged everyone return to work, although the spill left their employees injured, sick, and terrified. Over the years, Arkansas-based reporter Alice Driver was able to gain the trust of the immigrant workers who survived the accident. They rewarded her persistence by giving her total access to their lives. During the course of Alice’s reporting, the COVID-19 pandemic struck the community, and the workers were forced to continue production in unsafe conditions, watching their colleagues get sick and die one by one. These essential workers, many of whom only speak Spanish and some of whom are illiterate—all of whom suffer the health consequences of Tyson’s negligence—somehow found the strength and courage to organize and fight back, culminating in a lawsuit against Tyson Foods, the largest meatpacking company in America. A richly detailed, fiercely honest, and deeply reported “tour de force” ( Publishers Weekly , starred review), Life and Death of the American Worker will forever change the way we think about the people who prepare our food. “From the lush descriptions in the very first pages, it feels clear that Driver has longed to write about the state for some time. …. A work of journalism that seeks at once to draw attention to injustice and to philosophize, insisting on material equity and a specific notion of the good life. Driver frames the book in terms of ‘moral beauty’: an ethic of looking outside oneself, to the Other, in which she locates the good and the just. The work ethic and steadfast organizing of the people she chronicles transcends political activism and approaches something conceptual and timeless. … It’s when she calls on her experience as a reporter and an Arkansan that her doggedness and closeness to the story—and, in turn, her book’s emotional importance—best shine through…. The warmth that Driver must have developed with the people she was chronicling is evident. This rapport puts into practice Driver’s conceptual approach of ‘moral beauty.’ The combination of the two is perhaps the book’s most important contribution…. This book most reminded me of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James Agee and Walker Evans….Driver is a worthy inheritor of this tradition. …. Her lens of “moral beauty” enables her to create art without aestheticizing the workers’ suffering. In part, it’s her training as a literary scholar—and specifically as a scholar of the literature of death in Mexico—that enables her to ground and humanize the exploitation she observes. … No matter how foreclosed the legal possibilities for holding Tyson accountable, Driver demands that the company answer on a higher plane—to see that it has done wrong in the courts of what is human, ethical, and morally beautiful.” —Caroline Tracey, The Nation "Intimately reported." — The New Yorker "[Alice Driver] offers incredible insights into the expendable lives powering an “essential” industry." —Philip Johnson, A Conversation Best Book of 2024 "A startling glimpse into the meatpacking industry’s abuse of undocumented and incarcerated workers." — The New York Times Book Review "A tour de force" — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) "The workers who feed us are some of America's poorest and most exploited. Alice Driver tells their stories with enormous compassion and grace. A fearless, wonderful book." —ERIC SCHLOSSER, author of Fast Food Nation " Life and Death of The American Worker is not only a horror story of corporate negligence but a deeply humane work about what we owe each other. How chilling it is to think that no one else but Driver could have written such a vital book." — SLOANE CROSLEY, author of Grief Is For People "An extraordinary feat of reporting—a gripping investigation into the brutal, often life-threatening conditions faced by America's most vulnerable workers. It's hard to imagine a more urgent or timely book, one written with rigor, deep compassion, and moral clarity. A vital, infuriating book - an absolute must-read. Highly recommended.” —BRIAN GOLDSTONE, author of There Is No Place For US “Not since The Jungle has a book punched me quite literally in the stomach like this one has. Alice Driver's invitation to sit at the table with the workers who package our dinners, who create the nuggets we hand our children in the backseats of our cars, is an unforgettable experience. Life and Death of the American Worker is a masterpiece that will be referenced for generations.” —STEPHANIE LAND, bestselling author of Maid a