Mark Pendergrast - For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It

PRAISE FOR MARK PENDERGRASTS

For God, Country & Coca-Cola

In For God, Country & Coca-Cola, Mark Pendergrast has written an encyclopedic history of Coke and its subculture, and used Coca-Cola as a metaphor for the growth of modern capitalism itself. His research and storytelling skills are prodigious.

Washington Post

A meticulously researched history.... [Pendergrast] aggressively sets the record straight about the birth of Coke, shattering company myths.

New York Times Book Review

A detailed and marvelously entertaining history... a book as substantial and satisfying as its subject is (at least in nutritional terms) inconsequential.

Los Angeles Times

Behind the glitz and fanfare, the bubbly brown beverage has had a tortured and controversy-filled history. It is meticulously chronicled in a new account, For God, Country & Coca-Cola.

The Wall Street Journal

A ripping good story of more than a soft drink or a company, this book is about the whole of America. It may be the greatest American story ever.

The New York Observer

In For God, Country & Coca-Cola, author Mark Pendergrast combines lively writing and extensive research to tell the story of the caramel-colored drink that grew into a worldwide corporation and cultural phenomenon. Like its subject, Pendergrasts entertaining book can claim to be the real thing.

USA Today

The book is full of wonderful stories and tidbits.... [W]hen Pendergrast reports the Cokelore he has gathered so assiduously, he is superb.

Washington Monthly

As Atlanta native Mark Pendergrast tells us in For God, Country & Coca-Cola, an obsession with growth has been a company hallmark for most of the past century. Pendergrasts account is a good deal more intriguing than the sanitized corporate history Coke peddles at its World of Coca-Cola museum.

Business Week

By the time we move on to Cokes globe-drenching present, we have learned to trust Pendergrasts thorough research, lively style, and sense of perspective. [His book] is an epic, unbelievably grand in scope and implication.

Valley News

It is easy to trivialize soda... but as Mark Pendergrast demonstrates, to the people at Coke it is a deadly serious business.... He succeeds admirably in demonstrating... how Coke conquered the world.

Philadelphia Inquirer

An excellent and entertaining book! I read this book and simply couldnt put it down! I bought 8 copies of it to give to family and friends as gifts. Ill never look at a Coca-Cola product the same way again. From a business or historical perspective, this is a great read!

Amazon customer review

FOR GOD, COUNTRY
&
COCA-COLA

The Definitive History
of the
Great American Soft Drink
and the
Company That Makes It

THIRD EDITION: REVISED AND EXPANDED

MARK PENDERGRAST

BASIC BOOKS

A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP

New York

Copyright 2013 by Mark Pendergrast

Published by Basic Books,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10107.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pendergrast, Mark.

For God, country and Coca-Cola : the definitive history of the great American soft drink and the company that makes it / Mark Pendergrast.Third Edition: Revised and Expanded.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-46504-699-7

1. Coca-Cola CompanyHistory. 2. Soft drink industryUnited StatesHistory.

I. Title.

HD9349.S634C674 2013

338.7'663620973dc23

2012051356

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

~ 1916 ~

Business has its Romance. The inner history of every great business success is just as stirring and fascinating as the most imaginative story ever told. Real success never comes easy.... Progress has been achieved only through continual struggle and hard, patient work. It has called for ingenuity and resource of the highest order, the courage that accepted no defeat, the endurance that wore down all opposition, the confidence that overcame every jealous libel.

And such has been the history of Coca-Cola.

The Romance of Coca-Cola (booklet)

~ May 2 1, 1942 ~

Since 1886... changes have been the order of the day, the month, the year. These changes, I may add, are partly or wholly the result of the very existence of The Coca-Cola Company and its product.... They have created satisfactions, given pleasure, inspired imitators, intrigued crooks.... Coca-Cola is not an essential, as we would like it to be. It is an ideait is a symbolit is a mark of genius inspired.

Letter from advertising man William C. DArcy

~ March 24, 1959 ~

Please, Mr. Kahn, youve written some excellent articles and profiles, but why all this effort spent on Coca-Cola? I cant conceive that it could be interesting to enough people to be worth your using all that paper, all those thousands of words, and hours of labor to write it. In addition, I consider it a most noxious drink.

Letter to E. J. Kahn Jr. in response to a series of articles on Coca-Cola in the New Yorker

~ July 10, 1985 ~

Why read fiction? Why go to movies? Soft drink industry has enough roller coaster plot-dips to make novelists drool.

Jesse Meyers in Beverage Digest special edition announcing reintroduction of original Coca-Cola

DEDICATED TO

Irene Lilienheim Angelico and Abbey Jack Neidik, film documentarians extraordinaire, creators of The Cola Conquest

AND TO THE MEMORY OF

Roberto C. Goizueta, Coca-Cola CEO and missionary,

AND

E. J. Kahn Jr., Coca-Cola chronicler

This book has been a kind of roots project for me. Since both sides of my family lived in Atlanta from the late nineteenth century on, I suppose it was inevitable that Coca-Cola would intersect our lives many times. My paternal grandfather, J. B. Pendergrast, owned a drugstore at Little Five Points, where he regularly served the soft drink to Asa Candler, the first Coca-Cola tycoon. J. B. testified amusingly about Cokes nicknames in an early, important Coca-Cola trial, then invested in the Woodruff Syndicates takeover of the company in 1919. Unfortunately, J. B. sold the stock a few years later in order to build a house. The most intriguing family story concerns the day young Robert W. Woodruff and his friend Robert W. Schwab discussed Helen Kaisers allure as they sat outside her home. Well, Woodruff said, I think Ill go propose to her right now, awaiting a protest. Go ahead, Schwab answered, feigning lack of interest. When Woodruff returned a few minutes later, he said, She turned me down. I guess youll have to marry her. Schwab did, later becoming my maternal grandfather.

If Woodruff had married her, perhaps I would be a wealthy man todayor I might not be here at all, since Woodruff, who directed Coca-Colas fortunes from 1923 until his death in 1985, had no children. Its just as well that things worked out the way they did, though, since Ive enjoyed taking a more objective view of the Company and its entertaining role in world history. I hope you will, too.