by Dan Baum
First published 2000
Dan Baum chronicles the Coors family's rise from Adolph Coors's 1868 arrival as a penniless Prussian immigrant to their creation of a billion-dollar brewing empire. The author traces how four generations built their business through product devotion and financial independence while rejecting modern marketing practices. Baum documents the family's personal tragedies, including Adolph's 1929 suicide during Prohibition and a second eerily similar death decades later. He examines how patriarchal control fractured family relationships, with sons like Joe Jr. banished for unauthorized marriages and Peter blocked from company leadership despite his training. The narrative reveals how the Coors family's nineteenth-century conservative principles led them to finance the Heritage Foundation, support Ronald Reagan's early political career, and fund right-wing causes. Baum shows how this political activism triggered massive consumer boycotts by unions, minorities, and environmental groups that damaged the company for decades. Drawing from over 150 interviews, the book demonstrates how one family's business decisions and ideological commitments reshaped American political discourse in the late twentieth century.
Genres: history, 20th-century, business, biography-memoir, 21st-century, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-drama, ideological-conflict
Setting: America, Prussia
Period: 1868, 1929, 20th Century, Late 20th Century
352 pages · Hardcover · William Morrow