n 1951, the largest retailer in the world was the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, or A&P. Founded in 1869, the food chain seized upon the faster communications and more efficient transportation links of its era—a new transcontinental railroad and, later, automobiles and trucks—to build supermarkets with wondrous-seeming selection and lower prices. Throughout the company’s rise, as Marc Levinson describes in a fascinating history,1 it was a target of anger and lobbying by small-town grocers and producers, who protested that A&P was destroying not only their livelihoods, but also the quintessential place of small enterprise in American life. A&P perfected a “relentless squeeze on suppliers” and it “pioneered the practice of carefully dissecting manufacturers’ costs to determine what prices they should receive for their products,” much as Amazon is doing to book publishers today. Also like Amazon, the supermarket deliberately sold some items below cost to attract customers who, once in the store, would also buy profitable items. - www.nybooks.com